Our Father's Book; 



OR THE DIVINE ORIGIN AND 

AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE. 



Israel P. Warren, D.D. 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 




Slielf VshS 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



IAR a inp« 



OUR FATHER'S BOOK: 



OK, THE 



DIVINE OEIGIN AND AUTHORITY 

OF 

THE BIBLE. 



BY 



ISRAEL P.^WARREN, D.D. 




BOSTON: 

(Congregational Simtoags&cfjool anti iJublt'sijtng Socittg, 

CONGREGATIONAL UOUSE. 



^\ 






^35 



Copyright, by 
Congregational S. S. and Publishing Society. 

1885. 



STEREOTYPED BY 

C. J. Peters and Son, Boston. 



PKEFACE. 



The purpose of this book is to help common 
readers, especially among the young, to perceive 
and to feel the Divine character of the Bible. It 
is not addressed to scholars, though what are 
supposed to be the conclusions of the best schol- 
arship have been carefully consulted in its pre- 
paration. Disputed topics, such as the authorship 
of the Pentateuch, and the like, have been mostly 
avoided, or but briefly alluded to, as have also 
technical forms of statement, which are not gen- 
erally well apprehended. 

Particular care has been taken with the subject 
embraced in Chapter V., viz., how the Divine 
thought and will are to be discerned in the words 
of the human authors, many of them entirely 
unknown. It is believed that here is one of the 
greatest difficulties in securing respect and obe- 
dience for the Bible as the Word of God. The 

3 



4 PREFACE. 

writer has more than once been asked how Psalm 
cxxxvii. 8, 9, can be inspired; or Ecclesiastes iii. 
17-22 ; or the Song of Solomon ; or in what way 
these and many like passages communicate God's 
will to us. It is well known that they are the 
abiding stock in trade of infidels and mockers of 
the Scriptures, and it was thought that no better 
service could be rendered to the Book than to 
show the principles upon which they are to be 
interpreted consistently with the claim for them 
of a Divine authority. For this purpose, one of 
those portions, the Song of Solomon, usually 
acknowledged to be hardest of all to explain, has 
been exhibited at greater length than was at first 
intended. Our readers will judge with what 
success. 

May the Divine Spirit graciously accept every 
endeavor, however unpretending, to facilitate the 
devout acceptance of His own truth. 

Portland, Me., 
New Year's Day, 1885. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

PAGE 

Extent of the subject 9 

Nature of the reasoning employed 10 

A supposed case 10 

External evidence 11 

Internal evidence 11 



CHAPTER n. 

THE FORM OF THE BOOK. 

Three noticeable peculiarities in it 13 

Section 1. Variety of compositions 13 

That variety described 14 

Estimate of this peculiarity 14 

1. The pure didactic method not always the best . . 14 

2. Truth most acceptable in the concrete 15 

3. Is most effective in diversified forms 16 

4. It presents the greatest variety and abundance . . 16 

5. It disciplines both the judgment and the heart . . 17 

6. It never becomes obsolete 18 

Section 2. Variety of writers 20 

Many persons employed in its composition 20 

1. Amanuenses 21 

2. Historiographers 21 

3. Interpreters 22 

4. Compilers 22 

Advantages of this method of composition 24 

1. It brings God near to us 24 

2. Imparts to the work a human interest 25 

3. Is most easily understood 27 

4. Is invested with greatest moral power 28 

Section 3. Variety in its grades of instruction 29 

The various ages of human life 29 

5 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Analogous ages of the world 31 

The Bible adapts its instructions to each 34 

This method explains many difficulties 34 

1. The earliest teachings about nature and man ... 34 

Of God the Creator 34 

Of the fact and the origin of sin 36 

2. The silence of the Old Testament about gospel truths, 38 

3. Earliest imperfection in moral instructions ... 40 

CHAPTER III. 

ITS HISTORY. 

Significance in the mode of a gift 42 

Section 1. Our English Bible 42 

The translators 42 

Previous translations 43 

The Hebrew and Greek manuscripts 44 

The Revision of 1881 44 

Section 2. The Old Testament 46 

1. The formation of the Canon 46 

The Septuagint Version 46 

Th3 work of Ezra and his associates 48 

The Apocrypha 48 

2. The Sacred Writers 49 

The Pentateuch 49 

Joshua 53 

Judges and Ruth 53 

Samuel 54 

Kings 54 

Chronicles 55 

Ezra and Neheniiah 55 

Esther 55 

Job 55 

The Psalms 55 

The Proverbs 56 

Ecclesiastes 56 

The Song of Solomon 56 

The Prophets 56 

3. The Bible in the time of Christ 57 

Section 3. The New Testament 60 

Special difficulty of the subject 60 

The first Christian teachings oral 61 

Beginning of written documents 62 

The Epistle of James 62 

The Gospel of Matthew 63 

The Epistles of Paul 64 

The Gospel of Luke 64 

The Gospel of Mark 64 

Epistles of James, Peter, and Jude 65 

The Revelation 66 

The Gospel and Epistles of John , , f ,,♦>;,,, 66 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

The Apocryphal writings 66 

The formation of the Canon 67 

Spontaneous action of the churches 67 

The accepted books before a. d. 70 68 

The accepted books a. d. 70 and 100 68 

Testimonies between a. d. 100 and 150 69 

Testimonies between a. d. 150 and 200 70 

Testimonies after a. d. 200 72 

Fifty copies ordered by Constantino 72 

The weight of these testimonies . 72 

1. Competency of the churches to decide .... 73 

Extent of the personal labors of the Apostles . . 73 

Their writings designed to be encyclical .... 71 

Travels performed for inquiry 74 

2. Were under the greatest motives to truthfulness . 76 

Their own highest hopes involved 76 

They incurred social separation from friends . . 76 

They were exposed to martyrdom ...... 77 

CHAPTER IV. 

ITS DIVINE AUTHORITY, 

Difficulty of the ordinary views of Inspiration 79 

Section 1. Nature of Inspiration 80 

The supposed gift of a library 80 

Would involve care for the authorship 82 

Would involve oversight of the selection 83 

Would require its safe transmission 83 

All these combined in the Bible 84 

1. It is, therefore, an Inspired Book 85 

2. It is wholly Inspired 85 

3. It is verbally Inspired 86 

4. Its Inspiration is complete 86 

Section 2. Proofs of its Inspiration 87 

The testimony of Christ 87 

Views of the Jews at that day 88 

Christ educated in those views 88 

Specimens of his teachings 01 

The testimony of the Apostles 95 

CHAPTER V. 

ITS DIVINE MEANING DISCERNED. 

How we may see God's Word in the human words .... 102 

Illustration from the " Giant-Killer " 102 

1. In portions of known Divine origin 103 

1. In God's own spoken words 10.; 

2. The words of Christ 104 

.">. The words of the Apostles 105 

4. The words of the Prophets L06 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

2. In the anonymous portions 107 

Illustration from Matthew's genealogical record .... 107 

Illustration from the Book of Ruth Ill 

The principle applied 115 

The Historical Books 115 

The Book of Job 117 

The Psalms 118 

The Proverbs 121 

Ecclesiastes 121 

The Song of Solomon 122 

Special application of the principle to this book . 122 

The usual allegorical theory 122 

The more literal theory 123 

The plan according to Prof. Ginsberg 124 

A metrical translation 125 

The divine teaching on the literal theory . . . 144 

The divine teaching as an allegory 148 



CHAPTER VI. 

RECAPITULATION. 
The Bible is " Our Father's Book*' 151 



OUR FATHER'S BOOK. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 



The general subject intended by the Inspiration 
of the Scriptures is one of vast extent. It includes 
the origin, composition, structure, authenticity, 
genuineness, preservation, and authority of the 
Book, or rather of that collection of books, which we 
call the Bible. An exhaustive consideration of 
these would require another volume as large as 
itself. As usually presented, it involves discussions 
and technicalities scarcely appreciable by ordinary 
readers, and which do not seem necessary for the 
purposes now in view. We propose to approach 
it in the simplest manner possible, in such a line 
of argument and illustration as shall be obvious 
to the plain common sense of every reader. 

This venerated volume, the Bible, comes to us 
purporting to be a communication from heaven. 
It is Our, Father's Book. Such is its claim, and 
such the character and authority conceded to it by 
all Christians. What we wish to inquire about 
now is the rightfulness of that claim. And in so 

9 



10 our father's book. 

doing, let us remind our readers that it is not a 
case where mathematical demonstration is appli- 
cable. We cannot reason upon it as we do upon a 
problem in geometry or a question of arithmetic. 
It is rather like the cases which are brought before 
our courts of law, where facts are submitted to the 
intelligence and sound judgment of a jury. The 
verdict they are expected to render is not that of 
absolute knowledge or infallible certainty, but 
of what is true according to their best conviction 
and belief. And this is enough for all practical 
purposes. Property, reputation, liberty, and even 
life itself are among all civilized nations made 
dependent on such verdicts. 

Is this Bible our Father's Book? Suppose we 
had to decide a similar question respecting the 
alleged writings of an earthly father. Here is a 
volume containing sixty-six letters and other 
documents, long the cherished possession of the 
family, which purports to be a collection of the 
papers of their absent father, sent from time to 
time for the instruction and training of his chil- 
dren. It is an old book ; it has been long in use. 
The children to whom it was first addressed are 
all dead. The paper is stained by age, and the 
style is quaint and old-fashioned. And now, in 
the lapse of time, as bearing on some question of 
legacy or transmitted obligation, the question 
arises as to the genuineness of that old book. 
How should we proceed in answering it? 



INTRODUCTORY. 11 

Two ways would be possible. Leaving the book 
itself, we might go outside of it, and seek for evi- 
dence there. We might ask if there were those 
who personally knew of the father's writing, who 
saw him doing it, or saw the communications in 
passing, or knew of their actual delivery to the 
family. We might seek for any who remembered 
the children speaking of the letters they had re- 
ceived, and what they did in obedience to them, 
and what was said or done by the neighbors in 
consequence. All the external history, not only 
of the communications, but of the family, their 
friends, the times in which they lived, the state of 
the country and the world, would have some 
bearing on the subject, and, so far as relevant, 
might well be used in helping to judge of the 
credibility of the claim made in behalf of the 
book. 

Or we might look into the book itself, and see 
whether its contents corresponded to the claim. 
Here, if genuine, a thousand things would be 
found so corresponding. If not genuine, as many 
would soon be discovered inconsistent with it. 
In fact, this would be one of the very best tests. 
The outside evidence, from the lapse of time or 
other circumstances, might be meager. Witnesses 
might be dead, or their memory at fault. Corrob- 
orative facts might be forgotten. But the inward 
evidence would by its very nature be unchange- 
able. And so it is with what is called the interna] 



12 our father's book. 

evidence of the Bible. It is many hundred years 
since its several portions were written, and a 
great part of the evidence which history could 
once have afforded has been lost or is inaccessible. 
But the inward evidence remains. Therefore it 
is that the Bible itself is its own best witness, and 
our most direct and conclusive method is to begin 
by opening its sacred pages. 



CHAPTER II. 

ITS FORM. 

One of the first things which we notice when 
we open this volume is the peculiar form of its 
contents. A book of human instruction would be 
apt to be a single treatise, didactic in its method, 
from one author, and in one general style of state- 
ment and illustration. The Bible is very differ- 
ent ; and its peculiarities in this respect are worthy 
of some distinct consideration. We mention three : 
variety of its compositions, variety of its authors, 
and variety in its grades of instruction. 

Section I. 
Variety of Compositions. 
Nothing can be more miscellaneous than these 
writings. They are in fact a library rather than 
a volume, as indeed its name imports, " Biblla 
Sacra" the holy books. Here, for example, is an 
extended treatise of history, containing a great deal 
that apparently does not and cannot concern man- 
kind generally, and describing persons, events, sen- 
timents, manners, wholly unlike those of our time, 
and often repugnant even to our moral sense. 
There we find a drama or dialogue, in which per- 

13 



14 oub, father's book. 

sons dispute about questions in which none of 
them seem to be right or very well informed. 
Next is an old law-book, containing a curious 
code of statutes, — civil, military, religious, — all 
now obsolete, except so far as the substance of 
them may be incorporated in other legislation of 
later times and nearer home. Interspersed through- 
out are poems and songs, — here a pastoral, relat- 
ing how a fair young widow won the love of a 
wealthy and noble stranger, or a beautiful queen 
saved the lives of a whole nation ; there songs 
martial, devotional, and even love songs. Other 
pages disclose collections of proverbs and pithy 
sayings ; others still, impassioned declamations in 
loftiest poetry against prevalent wickedness or 
foreign oppressions, coupled with predictions of 
coming reforms, and purer and happier times. A 
second and later part of the volume contains sev- 
eral chapters of interesting biography, sketches of 
the origin of new institutions, and a collection 
of letters which discuss a great variety of ques- 
tions, both of belief and conduct, in relation to 
practical affairs. 

What must we say to all this ? Is this the way 
in which a parent would be likely to instruct his 
children ? Were another book of this sort found, 
pretending to be a volume of such instructions, 
could we readily accept it, made up in this miscel- 
laneous way, as being what it claimed to be ? 

1. Let us remember, first, that the pure didactic 



ITS FORM. 15 

method is not always the best for the purpose in 
view. To tell a child incessantly, this is so, and 
that is so, and you must do this, and you must do 
that, becomes irksome at last. Conscience itself 
becomes blunted under perpetual blows. Many 
an impatient boy has been driven into outbreaking 
misconduct under the constant nagging of an in- 
judicious parent. Somebody has said that " Don't 
twit " and " Don't tease " ought to have been put 
among the commandments. 

2. Moral truth is never so acceptable as when 
presented in the concrete, embodied in the forms 
of actual life. " Tell me a 'tory, mamma," is one 
of the very earliest demands of the little one, and 
in this form it literally drinks in instruction with 
its mother's milk. Nor is the story any the less 
palatable, — often it is even more so, — that it 
suddenly discloses at the end the little moral les- 
son, the admonition, the counsel, or even the re- 
proof, skilfully concealed till the right moment, 
and then opening with its full demand upon the 
conscience and the heart. And so it is that nar- 
rative, parable, fable, biography, and history be- 
come the most important vehicles for the instruc- 
tion of mankind. In a similar way with the more 
ideal classes of writing, poetry, oratory, the drama, 
and even works of fiction. What discriminating 
parent is there who, in providing a library for his 
library, does not aim to place all these in it ? Who 
would ever think of filling it up with bare didac- 



16 OUR father's book. 

tics, — sermons and moral essays and rules for 
holy living and dying, or would expect, if he did, 
that his boys could be driven to its use by any 
other means than the rod ? 

3. Moral instruction is infinitely more effective 
when conveyed through these diversified forms 
than it could be in any other. " As in water face 
answer eth to face, so the heart of man to man." 
It is human life, in all its outgoings and self-reveal- 
ings laid alongside of human life, that is the most 
effective of teachers to the latter. It is the charm 
and the power of all history and all biography, 
of fable and speech and song. This is what gives 
such force to the story of the Pilgrims in the 
Mayflower, of the battle of Bunker Hill and the 
signing of the Declaration of Independence, of the 
firing on Fort Sumter and the fields of Vicksburg 
and Gettysburg. It is this which thrills us as we 
read the immortal speeches of Adams upon the 
Declaration, of Webster in reply to Hayne, of 
Lincoln at the Gettysburg Cemetery, or hear the 
noble strains of the Star Spangled Banner and the 
Hymn to America. 

4. In like manner, we gain instruction in the 
greatest variety and abundance. The Apostle John 
says that if all the things which Jesus did should 
be written every one, the world itself could not 
contain the books. So if all the directions neces- 
sary to teach men how to live should be written 
out singly and separately, so as to meet the infinite 



ITS FORM. 17 

variety of conditions attending upon all human 
lives, the books would be without number or end. 
It is like the English common law ; no statute 
book could hold direct legislation made for every 
actual case that occurs in the innumerable trans- 
actions of every day business. If law is wanted 
in a particular instance, it is found, in the absence 
of positive statute, in the long record of prece- 
dents of the past; that is, in the principles embod- 
ied in other cases, more or less similar, occurring 
throughout the existence of the nation. So always, 
history, biography, fiction, poetry, and letters, 
are repositories of principles, which he who is 
honest in the search of truth can discern and apply 
for his own practical guidance, and often with far 
greater nicety of adaptation to his exact wants 
than he could find in any professed treatise of 
morals whatsoever. 

5. Moral instruction so conveyed is a discipline 
not for the conscience only, but for the judgment 
and the heart, indeed, for the whole intellectual 
and moral nature. Every wise father knows that 
his child's mind is not a mere receptacle into which 
wisdom and virtue are to be poured, as water into 
a cistern. Education is e-dueing i. e., drawing out 
the mind, not stuffing it. The moral faculty needs 
to be taught how to discern for itself what is truth 
and what is error, what is right and what is wrong. 
It ought to know how to learn from men's mis- 
takes and follies, and even sins, as it certainly 



18 our father's book. 

should from its own. The foolish virgins have a 
lesson for us as well as the wise. So the whole 
diversified forms of composition we have supposed 
are so many diversified forms of instruction. 
They constitute in the aggregate a transcript of 
human life as it is ; of the great world in which 
we and all men, in their successive generations, 
are to live and work out their moral history and 
destiny. Can anything be better than these for 
that training? Instead of being a mark of un- 
genuineness in a book purporting to be a summary 
of a father's instructions to his children, would 
they not be, when duly and rightly considered, 
strong confirmation, not only of its claims, but of 
the profound wisdom which so shaped and com- 
posed it ? 

6. Once more, an instruction book of this kind 
would never become obsolete. It would last as long 
as the family life lasted ; nay, it would serve with 
slight adaptations for all families and all time. 
And this, because principles are immortal. Laws 
change from age to age ; an essential part of the 
business of every legislature is repealing. Ethical 
sayings vary among different people and in different 
times. But the lessons of history never grow old; 
the story of Joseph is as fresh to-day, and as full of 
counsel and pathos, as it was thirty-five hundred 
years ago. The Roman poet boasted that he had in 
his graceful odes " reared a monument more lasting 
than brass." So while the world stands, the fifty- 



ITS FORM. 19 

first Psalm will be the vernacular of every penitent 
soul in tears before God, as the twenty-third will 
be the calm thanksgiving of him who dwells as a 
happy and contented member of a flock within the 
care of his heavenly Shepherd. 

It will scarcely be necessary for us to apply our 
illustration in detail to the composite character of 
the Bible. Let the reader do it for himself, and 
we are sure he will soon see why this wonderful 
Book has acquired and retains such a place as it 
has in the estimation of mankind. It is as if our 
heavenly Father took each of us by the hand and 
led us through the long gallery of human life and 
action for four thousand years. He shows us here 
what man has been and done, his good deeds and 
his evil ones, his wisdom and his folly, his joys 
and his sorrows, while in the mirror of the past 
he holds up to us the foreshadowed vista of the 
future. All along this gallery he talks to us with 
a Father's ineffable tenderness, explaining mistakes, 
inculcating lessons, and sometimes pointing, even, 
Without an added word, in sad and significant 
silence, to the false and wicked and shameful 
things the world has seen. And then, at last, he 
opens another room of ampler space and clearer 
light, and recounts to us the lives and sayings of 
apostles and martyrs; and, chief among all, pauses 
before One figure, the Man of all men, his own 
Son, and tells us what He said and did, and what 
lessons of more than human wisdom He left for 



20 our father's book. 

all men and for all time. And shall we now doubt, 
as we look back through the long corridor we have 
traversed, even though it have many figures and 
many scenes, and though the lessons have been 
infinitely varied in number and form and signifi- 
cance, that it is a Divine Wisdom which planned 
it, and a Divine Hand that has been throughout 
our Guide? 

Section II. 
Variety of Writers. 

A second peculiarity in the form and method of 
this book is that so many different persons were 
employed as its writers. It may be easy to com- 
prehend why so many styles of composition were 
used, but they should have been written, one 
might affirm, by the Divine Hand directly. In- 
stead of that, when we open the sacred volume, 
we find almost as many authors as books. And 
what adds to the difficulty, a large portion of 
these are anonymous. So that we have a double 
task set before our faith, to accept as the Word of 
God what, certainly as they come to us, are the 
words of men — to a large extent of unknown 
men — and to distinguish between the human and 
divine, so as to find the Word of God in the words 
of men. Let us look at these difficulties in the 
light of the illustration we have already used. 

Here, then, is a volume — or rather a library of 
many volumes — showing the handwriting and 



ITS FORM. 21 

being confessedly the work of many writers. We 
find among these : 

1. A number who profess to have been aman- 
uenses, persons who say that they were employed 
by the Author to take down the words spoken by 
his lips, the commands, the promises, the reproofs, 
the counsels designed for the instruction of the 
absent family. They expressly disclaim any per- 
sonal share in the authorship. Some of the sayings 
they recorded they did not themselves understand ; 
some were unwelcome utterances, as painful to 
write as to read. In all cases they affirm that they 
wrote just what was commanded them. No dis- 
cretion was allowed them in omitting anything, in 
modifying any idea, or softening any word. We 
write, they say, just what was given us to write ; 
no more, no less. 

2. Another class wrote historically. They were 
annalists, recorders, biographers. Sometimes the 
matters of which they wrote were within their 
personal knowledge or recollection ; sometimes 
they were derived from the Author himself in his 
earlier writings or sayings ; sometimes they were 
transcripts, more or less extensive, from public 
archives ; sometimes compilations from other 
writers, revised and edited for the present purpose. 
From whatever source derived, or into whatever 
form cast, they were intended and prepared for the 
use now designated, viz., to be a volume of in- 
structions, to teach in the way of history, chronol- 



22 our father's book. 

ogy, memoirs, and the like, the family for whom 
this loving and thoughtful Father is ever mindful, 
and for whose welfare he is assiduously laboring. 

3. A third class of writers employed in the pre- 
paration of this library were interpreters. From 
intimate personal acquaintance with the Father 
and long experience in his service, they have come 
to be very familiar with his opinions on all 
common topics and with his wishes respecting the 
family. They are employed, therefore, to write 
down those opinions and wishes in a detailed way, 
on a variety of practical subjects. The larger 
portion of these are in the form of letters addressed 
in the father's name to some of the eldest children. 
The language and style of these are various, bear- 
ing, indeed, the mental peculiarities of the 
writers themselves, yet all agreeing in substance 
with each other, and with what is otherwise 
known of him of whose sentiments and will they 
profess to be interpreters. 

4. Lastly, we find a class of writers, if not so 
conspicuous, yet no less important and responsible 
than the others, who were employed as compilers. 
For it being, as we saw in the preceding section, 
advisable that the volume which should suffice for 
the instruction of a large and diversified family 
for all time should contain a large and diversified 
bodjr of compositions, it became a work requiring 
great discretion to select these. Especially when, 
out of the abounding materials existing, there were 



ITS FORM. 



23 



ever very many unsuitable ones offering them- 
selves for the purpose ; works of false sentiment, 
erroneous history, or in some of many ways un- 
worthy of the place they were intended to fill. All 
who have to prepare reading matter for the public 
know that it is much easier to find a good writer 
than a thoroughly judicious editor. The former, 
indeed, are those who win the honors, whose 
names are emblazoned in public and enjoy the 
popular applause, but no less deserving are they 
who have the gift of discerning true merit, of de- 
tecting the unworthy, and are wise and courage- 
ous enough to brand with disapproval what has no 
claim for acceptance. 

Thus, then, the Book of which we have been 
conceiving was prepared. Confessedly the Father 
did not write it with his own hands. He em- 
ployed amanuenses, narrators, interpreters, com- 
pilers. Sometimes he dictated ; sometimes referred 
them to things formerly said or done by him ; 
sometimes sent them to public records or the 
works of other authentic writers ; sometimes gave 
them commission to explore existing literature 
and gather from it materials suitable for the pur- 
pose, to diversify, to enrich, to give roundness and 
completeness to his plan, in a word, to make up 
the Book as it is. All the while he kept the over- 
sight of the work; he appointed the writers, 
directed them what to do, approved each particu- 
lar part done, and at the last, when all was 



24 our father's book. 

completed, formally adopted and confirmed it as 
his own, declaring it to be his book. 

Thus there has come to us this divine Book, — 
not so much a volume as an encyclopaedia, a li- 
brarj^. Is its high claim to be questioned because 
of the way it was made up ? Is He whose name 
and credentials it bears any the less its Author 
because it was not written, like the tablets of 
stone given to Moses, with his own fingers? Was 
the Code Napoleon, that masterpiece of jurispru- 
dence which has become the foundation of legis- 
lation in almost all Europe, though composed and 
compiled through a period of years by a large body 
of skillful jurists, statesmen, and scholars, any the 
less the enactment of the great emperor whose 
name it bears ? 

Reserving now, for the present, the evidence of 
the fact of such a Divine adoption of this work, 
and the methods by which we are to distinguish 
between what is of the Divine Author and what 
of the human writer, let us glance at some of the 
advantages resulting from this manner of prepar- 
ing the Book. 

1. Comprehensively, it brings God near to us. 
Like the revelation of the Infinite in the person 
of Christ, it is a second incarnation of the Divine 
in the words and thoughts of men. " No man 
hath seen God at any time ; the only begotten 
Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath 
declared him." So, except once or twice when 



ITS FORM. 25 

the heavenly voice addressed Jesus, no man, since 
the days of Sinai, when God uttered the ten words 
of the Law, hath heard God at any time, and even 
then it was such a voice of awe that the people 
begged not to hear it any more. " Speak thou 
with us," they said to Moses, "but let not God 
speak to us lest we die." So, accordingly, he has 
spoken with men through Moses and the prophets, 
and in later days through his Son and the apos- 
tles, using human language, and fitting divine 
thoughts to human words, framed after our own 
finite conceptions, and uttered in our own familiar 
ways by speech or pen. 

2. With all this, we have also the attractions 
of a human interest thrown over the divine com- 
munication. The heavenly thought comes to us 
borne upon the sweet sounds of our mother 
tongue. We go into the tent life of the patri- 
archs, and hear mothers singing to their children; 
we follow the poor slave boy from the sheep pas- 
tures of Dothan to the palace of the Pharaohs ; 
we bend with the princess and her train over the 
little papyrus cradle on the brink of the Nile, and 
trace thence the career of the noble youth, the 
liberator, law-giver, prophet, and historian, till lie 
attains that angel-guarded grave on Mount Nebo. 
We hear Deborah's song of victory. We see the 
pious Hannah giving thanks for her son, and 
making yearly the little coats in which he shall 
appear before the Lord in Shiloh. We are with 



26 our father's book. 

David in the sheep pastures; in his battle with 
the boastful giant; in his minstrelsy in the palace 
of Saul ; in his own accession to the kingdom ; in 
his honored old age, and his peaceful death. We 
listen to the hymns he sung as the shepherd-boy, 
the warrior, the king, the penitent sinner. We 
visit with "the queen of the south" the court of 
Solomon, and see all his glory, and listen to his 
wise sayings and his impassioned songs. We are 
thrilled with the lofty utterances of the prophets, 
the grand oratorio of Isaiah, the sublime hymn of 
Habakkuk. Then we come down to Bethlehem 
and Xazareth, and read of that wonderful child 
and his beautiful virgin mother, and their home 
life, when he wrought with his father as a car- 
penter. We follow him to the Jordan to be bap- 
tized, and to the wilderness to be tempted, and 
thenceforward through all the weary way of toil 
and teaching, of beneficence and suffering, till it 
culminates at Pilate's hall and Calvary. Then 
the story of the works, the writings and the 
deaths of apostles and martyrs, and the glorious 
apocalyptic vision of the Xew Jerusalem, in which 
the long, sad drama of earth and time shall end. 
How human it all is ! How interesting for its own 
sake ! How do children hang delighted over its 
stories, and poets and artists vie with each other 
in reproducing their ideals in numbers and paint- 
ing ! What myriads, attracted first by this human 
element, have been led at last to discern and to 



ITS FORM. 27 

yield to the divine which gave inspiration and 
power to the whole. 

3. A revelation so given is most easily understood. 
Paul was once taken up to Paradise, and heard 
things in the proper language of heaven ; but he 
says they were unspeakable, and such as none 
might utter. But the things which he wrote in 
his earthly letters to the churches he had planted 
and suffered for could both be spoken and under- 
stood. If they wanted commentaries upon them, 
he bade them take him. Be followers of me ; walk 
as ye have us for an ensample. It was the divine 
brought to men in the human, and this the human 
could understand. So throughout the Bible. If you 
want to know what faith is, go and spend a night 
with Abraham when he is on that lonely wandering 
journey, not knowing whither he went. If you 
would see a real Greatheart escorting his pilgrims, 
follow the career of Moses. If you want an ideal 
of a pure home affection, go and see the parting 
between Ruth and her mother-in-law. If you ask 
what is true repentance, go into David's bed-cham- 
ber, and listen to the broken voice which utters 
the fifty-first Psalm. So there is not a duty, a 
virtue, a grace of character, or lofty ideal of at- 
tainment, that you cannot find described and set 
before you in living example here. There is not 
a fault, a weakness, a folly, a sin, of which you 
cannot find both specimen and warning in this 
Book of books. There is not so knotty a question 



28 our father's book. 

of morality, so difficult a problem of duty, that 
you cannot find a thread of right and safety 
through it. It is adapted to every age and every 
station, the child and the sage, the prince and the 
peasant ; it is a light that never goes out, a foun- 
tain that never runs dry. 

4. And hence it is, finally, that it is invested 
with a poiver over mankind which surpasses every 
other. There is no other book that lays hold of 
human hearts as this does. Coleridge expressed 
it in a word, " It finds me." The man does not 
live who can go into his private chamber, and, 
with a serious mind, open and read an hour in 
this book, and not feel as if God had spoken to 
him. Of course, he may read to disbelieve and to 
scoff, and he will hear only the echo of his own 
blasphemous thoughts ; but let him read to hear 
its true utterance, and the still, small voice of the 
Spirit will breathe in every page. The world 
over, to-da}^, this is the book for the closet, for 
the midnight hour, for solitude. And not less is 
it the book of life and action. Its principles 
underlie every code of morals ; its teachings affect 
legislation and all the intercourse of peoples and 
nations. There is not another book so much read. 
There is none the copies of which are so multi- 
plied. There is none which is receiving so much 
study and elucidation from all the sources of 
human knowledge. There is none which is so 
fast being translated into every language, and 



ITS FORM. 29 

becoming the universal book of mankind. It is 
the most human book in the world, touching more 
human beings, and touching them in more ways, 
than any other. It is the most divine book in the 
world, speaking and revealing things transcending 
all finite thought. It is the most divine book be- 
cause it is the most human. 

Section III. 
Variety in its Grades of Instruction. 

In providing a book of instruction for a family, 
which is to supply the wants of all, there must 
evidently be an adaptation to the wants of all. 
Indeed, in any such supposed case we should 
expect to find indications that, before the first 
written instruction, there had been a period of 
oral teaching. Before the little ones had learned to 
read, or had knowledge enough of themselves and 
things around them to make that method avail- 
able, they had received many an important lesson. 
Home training begins in the cradle. Smiles and 
frowns are a significant alphabet there. Baby 
talk, that seems silly to others, is often a mother's 
wisdom to those who cannot understand any other. 
So, during all the days of the nursery, the reign of 
the dolls and the rocking-horses, of dissected alpha- 
bets and picture primers, the first slate and pencil 
and the multiplication table, there has been, if the 
parents were wise, a continued course of iustruc- 



30 our father's book. 

tion and government of utmost importance in its 
bearing upon the character of the after-life. 

After this come the schooldays, protracted often 
through the entire minority, till twenty-one or 
more. All this period is one peculiarly adapted 
to the sort of instruction we are contemplating. 
A father's or mother's correspondence with a child 
away from home, at school or in college, is often 
the golden chain of love and wisdom that does 
more to save from harm and shape the whole 
course of future life than all other influences com- 
bined. In such a repository of a father's letters 
as we have supposed, we should expect to find a 
large space filled with what was addressed to the 
sons and daughters in the forming periods of their 
school life. 

At length youth passes into manhood, and the 
grave responsibilities of mature age are to be 
assumed. None so well knows as a father what 
need of wisest counsels then. New homes are to 
be formed, new social ties created. Occupations 
are to be chosen, and principles and habits adopted 
which are to rule in business, in politics, in society, 
and in religion. The letters of parental advice 
and suggestion show how warm the sympathy 
between the old home and the new, and in these 
we find the gravest lessons, the deepest discus- 
sions, the wisdom gathered from widest experience 
and observation, fondly bestowed to form the 
model of a noble and happy life. 



ITS FORM. 31 

Of course, we should find the letters addressed 
to different ages corresponding in their contents 
to the capacities and circumstances of those for 
whom they were intended. A letter for the school- 
boy of ten would be very unlike that meant for 
the young man of twenty-one. Its subjects would 
be different, its style of composition different, its 
directions as to conduct and behavior different. 
The evidences of the father's authorship would be 
as apparent in the adaptations of hi? instructions 
to the varying ages, characters, and necessities of 
his children, as in their intrinsic wisdom. 

The circumstances thus supposed are paralleled 
throughout in the Bible, and are, when duly con- 
sidered, among the most striking evidences that it 
is our Father's Book. From the time of Moses, 
the date of its first writings, till the death of the 
apostle John, is a period of at least sixteen hun- 
dred years, probably more. Sixteen centuries of a 
family life imply great variety as well as long con- 
tinuance. Indeed, we have here, as in the other 
case, numerous glimpses of a period of the world 
preceding the age of written instruction. When 
writing was invented nobody knows ; what the 
dates of the earliest sculptures and papyri of 
Egypt is yet undetermined. There was, however, 
for mankind as a whole, a long period before and 
immediately after the deluge, when instruction was 
solely in oral forms. It was the period of un writ- 
ten revelation, the intellectual childhood of the 



32 our father's book. 

race. What precisely the contents of that revela- 
tion were it is impossible now to say. The few 
hints we have of the antediluvians show it to have 
been exceedingly rudimentary, though sufficient 
to give a knowledge of right and wrong and 
create moral responsibility. After the flood those 
glimpses multiply, and we have traces of the 
knowledge of the one true God, and the simplest 
forms of worship by sacrifice and prayer, in the 
ancestry of Abram. Thence, through the patri- 
archal period and the servitude in Egypt, we hear 
of occasional direct communications from God, 
appointing special acts of duty, and pointing 
forward to better things to come. All this long 
duration was the world's infancy, and it is in per- 
fect analogy with what we always find in family 
history, that there was then no written and per- 
manent revelation. 

From the time of Moses to Christ was, so to 
speak, the school age of the world. This is the 
very designation given to it by the apostles. "The 
heir, before he comes of age, is under tutors and 
governors appointed by the father." 1 "The law 
is our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ." 2 
Here, now, we find a very different state of things 
from before. God reveals himself in his infinite 
personality as one God, Jehovah, the self-existent 
and eternal. He appoints modes of worship, and 
enacts a complex system of laws to regulate the 
iGal. 4:1, 2. 2 Gal. 3:24. 



ITS FORM. 33 

whole religious and social life. He says little of 
doctrine, he goes into no discussions of principles 
or abstract truths. He commands, " Do this and 
live ; disobey and die." It is, throughout, a peda- 
gogic system, of lessons and stints, of exercises 
and tasks, of calisthenics and gymnastics, enforced 
by rewards and punishments in keeping with the 
purposes of a proper school discipline. And the 
Old Testament is the record of it, telling us how it 
went with them, how they obeyed and how they 
sinned, how they sung and how they wept, how 
they were taught by the wisdom of sages, and 
how reproved and warned and cheered by the 
messages of the prophets, until the time came for 
this imperfect stage to close, and the manhood of 
the world to be entered on. 

And now a new revelation adapted to this new 
age. Rites and ceremonies pass away, and prin- 
ciples succeed. Love takes the place of Law; Je- 
hovah is made known as the Father, and instead of 
priest and prophet his Son comes to be the Teacher 
of men. It is true that the new lessons are hard 
to learn. Dull ears and sluggish hearts at first 
fail to comprehend them. And yet there is pro- 
gress. Three and a half years the Master teaches 
in person. Then he appoints apostles, and endues 
them with power to speak in his name, and so the 
New Testament is filled up and is given as 
the finished and complete instruction book for the 
world and for all time. 



34 our father's book. 

Id all this, how perfect the adaptation of the 
means to the end in view. We see revelation 
progressive, plastic, suited to every age and condi- 
tion of those for whom it is intended. We see a 
wise Father sending his instructions to all as they 
are able to comprehend and profit by them. It is 
one of the lesser and perhaps not often noticed 
marks of the divine wisdom which shines in this 
venerable volume, and which accredits it to our 
judgments and hearts as the Book of our Father. 

But there are some special facts of great im- 
portance growing out of this adaptation of the Bible 
to the different ages of the world, which need 
special consideration. 

1. It accounts very perfectly for the forms in 
which the earliest teachings respecting the universe 
and man are cast. 

One of the first things that men needed to know 
was that there is one Grod who made the world and 
all it contains. The tendencies of all untaught 
people have been to see supernatural powers in 
the great forces at work around them, in the sun 
and moon and stars, the winds and storms and 
seasons, in health and disease, in all wonderful 
things that happen, and all remarkable sights that 
are seen. Hence the origin of idolatry, the wor- 
ship of Baal and Ashtoreth, of Zeus and Jupiter, 
Apollo and Diana, and the innumerable deities of 
the heathen pantheon. And as these supposed 
powers were ever acting upon man, doing him 



ITS FORM. 35 

good or evil, gratifying or defeating his desires, so 
it became worship to the gods to do that over 
which they presided, to please Mars by fighting, 
and Bacchus by getting drunk, and Venus by 
debauchery, etc. Hence practical idolatry was 
everywhere unrestrained vice, and the orgies of 
heathen worship were too foul even for mention. 
It was then a first requisite for all true religion to 
know that there was one only God, the creator of 
all things, and the author of all those forces and 
appearances which mankind in their ignorance put 
in his place. So the Bible begins, just as it ought 
to, by first teaching this great foundation fact. 

But how does it teacli it? Just as a parent 
would teach the same thing to a little child. It 
says, first, generally, " In the beginning God 
created the heavens and the earth.'' And then, 
holding up the great Builder vividly before the 
child's mind, it tells how he " spoke" and was 
obeyed. He said, " Let there be light." He spoke 
to the great sky above and said, "Let there be a 
division there, so that the upper waters (clouds) 
shall be separated from the lower waters" (the 
ocean). He spoke to these lower waters, and 
gathered them into seas. He spoke to the ground, 
and made the grass grow; and to the sun and 
moon, and made day and night; and to the sea, 
and made the fishes; and to the earth again, and 
made the beasts. Read Mrs. Barbauld's Prose 
Hymns for children, and see a perfectly corre- 



36 oub father's book. 

sponding way of teaching. And so the one great 
truth which man so much needed to know was 
taught. It was in a way which those of that age, 
and of all ages, have comprehended, and will so 
long as the world stands. 

Now we say it is one of the marks of inspiration 
that this prime fact of the creation was taught in 
this way. Suppose the scientific way had been 
adopted instead. Moses begins with the primeval 
" fire-mist " and the "nebular theory." He goes 
on to tell of revolutions and condensations, and 
internal heat and external coolings, of the succes- 
sive throwings off of planets and satellites and 
meteoric rings. He writes of crystallizations and 
stratifications, of granite and gneiss and plumbago 
and oolite, of azoic and protozoic and caenozoic 
ages, of evolution and development, of palaeontology 
and anthropology, etc. Can anybody suppose 
that would have been a better way? As well 
talk to a child of the solar parallax and the differ- 
ential calculus. Nobody in primitive times could 
have understood a word of it. If we had had a 
book pretending to be from God which exhibited 
its first lessons for mankind after that sort, that 
fact itself would be sufficient to brand it as an 
imposture. 

So with another great first truth, the fact and 
the origin of sin. When mere scientists attempt to 
grapple with these subjects, they find them among 
the most difficult presented to human thought. 



ITS FORM. 37 

All men are sinners, as everybody knows; but 
how did they become so ? What is the nature, 
and what are the limits, of that law of heredity 
which perpetuates in a child the character of his 
parents? Then, how did the first of the race be- 
come sinners? How can a holy being be tempted 
to sin, and how does the mind act when it sins ? 
The most profound treatises that President Ed- 
wards, our greatest American philosopher, wrote, 
were on "Original Sin," and the " Freedom of 
the Will." Supposing the Bible had attempted to 
explain these abstruse matters in the childhood age 
of the world, and had given profound disquisitions 
on psychology and metaphysics. What futility 
and folly had it been, utterly unlike the wise 
methods of our Father in heaven ! 

Instead of this, he adopts, as before, a way which 
even the child can understand. He tells the story 
of the first innocent pair; of their home in a 
beautiful garden where God used to come to con- 
verse with them ; of the command he gave to test 
them ; of the serpent that came and talked with 
them, and told lies, and promised nice things if they 
would disobey ; and how they listened to him and 
ate ; and how God was angry, and told them they 
should not live in the garden any longer, and 
how their tempter should crawl on his belly and 
eat dust, etc. Now here we have the great truths 
which man needs to know, the fact of sin in the 
individual and the race, and that sin as the fruit 



38 our father's book. 

of temptation and the voluntary act of responsible 
moral agents, and that sinners as such cannot en- 
joy the favor of God, the very foundation truths 
of the entire system of salvation. Whole volumes 
of metaphysics are here contained in a simple 
story that appeals to every heart, and is found 
among the primitive traditions of every race of 
mankind. 

2. In the same way is accounted for the appar- 
ent silence of the Old Testament respecting some 
of the most important gospel truths. We instance 
three which may serve as specimens of many, — 
the Trinity, the Atonement, and a Future State. 
These and similar doctrines are the " strong meat 
fitted for full-grown men, who, by reason of use, 
have their senses exercised." They have been 
the battle-ground of controversy during all the 
Christian ages. The last two, at least, are such a 
field of conflict to-da} 7- . Could we have expected 
that such subjects would be thrust upon the un- 
trained and ignorant people who had come out 
of the house of bondage in Egypt? And yet 
glimpses of all these topics were given from the 
very earliest periods. Suppose a mother, in her 
first religious lessons in the nursery, had always 
used the name of God in the plural, teaching her 
child to pray to " the Gods," to love " the Gods," 
that " the Gods " would be pleased, etc. ; and yet 
should always speak of " the Gods " as " He " or 
" Him," and moreover should expressly say that 



ITS FORM. 39 

there was but one God. Would not the child in- 
evitably get at least the rudiments of the two 
essential ideas of the Trinity, a plurality and a 
unity. Yet precisely such is the Hebrew name 
of God — Elohim. So with the atonement ; its cen- 
tral conception is that of sacrifice, which was in- 
stituted as early as the fall itself. And as to a 
future state ; what could a Jew have understood 
by the phrases, " he died and was gathered unto 
his fathers," "the righteous hath hope in his 
death," the disobedient " shall be cut off from his 
people ? " Remember that the eminent boast of 
the Israelite was that he, as one of the seed of 
Abraham, was in covenant with Jehovah. To be 
cut off from his people was to be shut out of that 
covenant, and be without hope and without God. 
Thus, it argues nothing against the divine origin 
of the Bible that it does not at first reveal in full 
the profound mysteries of doctrine disclosed in the 
New Testament. On the contrary, it is precisely 
in harmony with the natural method of parental 
instruction that it does not do that, while at the 
same time it gives hints and outlines of them to 
be the basis of the fuller instruction of the future. 
And this is precisely the mission which our Saviour 
claimed for himself as the great Teacher, "I came 
not to destroy the law, but to fulfill" — i.e., to 
fill up the outlines, to disclose their principles, 
and teach mankind how to apply them to the 
practical conduct of life. 



40 oun father's book. 

3. Ill like manner we account for the apparent 
imperfection of the earliest moral instruction. We 
can barely allude to this. Look at the first re- 
vealed law of God, the code which contained the 
entire system of ethics. It is called " The Ten 
Words" (Decalogue) and consists of ten simple 
commands, of which all but one are prohibitions. 
This is precisely the way the mother begins to 
legislate for her child. " DovCt" Don't strike ; 
don't quarrel ; don't touch the fire ; don't use bad 
words; don't do this or that. Reasons why are 
not given, or but sparingly ; they could not be 
understood if they were. So, among untaught 
people the standards of morals are always low. 
It requires an advanced stage of cultivation to 
comprehend the force of such a rule as Jesus 
gave, — the " Golden Rule" of all virtue, — or 
to carry it out into all its delicate and far-reach- 
ing applications. When skeptics sneer at the 
barbarity and coarseness and vices of the early 
Jewish people, even occasionally outcropping in 
such men as Moses, and Samson, and David and 
Solomon and Hezekiah, they ignore entirely the 
principle we are contending for. The best men 
and women that now live were not always para- 
gons of virtue in their childhood. 

Our subject grows upon us beyond our room ; 
but its leading idea can easily be followed out in 
numerous directions. We say then, generally, 
that all the rudimentary and apparently defect- 



ITS FORM. 41 

ive teachings of the Old Testament find here a 
sufficient solution. Nay, not sufficient only, but 
natural and wise. Assuming that the Bible is a 
Father's Book of instruction to his children, they 
are just such imperfections as we should look for 
in the earliest lessons ; and are therefore in them- 
selves evidence that were given by One who knew 
men, and what was in them, and what was best 
for them, that they might be lifted up gradually, 
in the only successful way possible, to the ulti- 
mate highest plane of knowledge and virtue. 



CHAPTER III. 

ITS HISTORY. 

There is much significance in the mode of a 
gift. If it be one from a father to his children, 
that mode will surely be worthy of it and of him. 
An imposture will be likely to have something 
doubtful and suspicious in its history. If God has 
given us his book, we may be confident that there 
are marks of his own wisdom and superintendence 
in the very channels through which it came. 
How, then, did we get our Bible ? 

We begin with our English Bible, and trace it 
back through the translations to the Hebrew and 
Greek manuscripts, and thence through the for- 
mation of the Canon to the original writers. 

Section I. 
Our English Bible. 
Two hundred and eighty years ago, a company 
of fifty four learned men were appointed by the 
King of England to prepare a translation of the 
Scriptures into English. They were supposed 
to be the fittest men in the kingdom for that pur- 
pose ; University professors, divines and scholars ; 
men of venerable character and exalted piety. 

42 



ITS HISTORY. 43 

Never was a book honored with such a corps of 
translators before. Never were men entrusted 
with a nobler charge, — to put what they believed 
to be God's word into the words of the foremost 
Christian nation, and a language that was to be 
spoken by uncounted millions of people through 
all coming time. The work was completed and 
published in 1611, and through innumerable edi- 
tions, in every variety of form, has come down to 
us. 

But whence did the translators obtain it? 
They had, first, a succession of previous transla- 
tions, which had from time to time been made by 
eminent scholars, and long hallowed by sacred 
use. Two hundred and thirty years before, when 
the English language was forming by fusion of 
the Saxon and Norman tongues, John Wiclif, a 
learned professor at Oxford, with the help of the 
best scholars of that day, first gave to it a transla- 
tion of the Scriptures, which more than any one 
thing served to impart to that forming tongue fixed- 
ness and perpetuity, and was the basis of all subse- 
quent translations. About one hundred and forty 
years later, William Tyndale, another Oxford 
scholar, issued a new and improved version of the 
New Testament, sealing his work a few years later 
with his blood, being burned at the stake by Henry 
VIII. in 1536. From that date till the time of 
James I. no less than five versions were issued, 
commonly known as Coverdale's, Taverner's, Cran- 



44 our father's book. 

mer's, the Genevan, and the Bishop's Bibles, all 
prepared by men of eminent ability, all having 
their own special merits, but no one fitted in all 
respects to become the English Bible for the nation 
and the race. Hence the last undertaking by 
order of King James I., which, by the verdict of 
all scholars, has given us what, though not with- 
out some blemishes, is the masterpiece of English 
literature. 

Second, they had the Hebrew and Greek origi- 
nals, which, by the labors of such scholars as 
Erasmus and others, had been compiled from 
ancient manuscripts and recently published on 
the Continent. In Wiclif's day these were little 
known, and his translation was made from the 
Latin Vulgate, which came down from St. Jerome 
about A.D. 390. The revival of learning in the 
fiftenth century brought to light many of these 
manuscripts, and led to the preparation of revised 
texts of both Hebrew and Greek. The whole 
number of Hebrew manuscripts now known, of 
various ages, including fragments, is somewhat 
less than seven hundred ; of Greek, over seventeen 
hundred. King James's translators, according to 
their statement on the title page, made their ver- 
sion from the original languages, diligently com- 
paring and correcting it by the former English 
versions. 

We add a few words here respecting the new 
Revision of 1881. The lapse of nearly three hun- 



ITS HISTORY. 45 

dred years has made some changes in our lan- 
guage, and a wider range of manuscripts has 
disclosed some errors in the texts formerly used. 
It had long been felt, therefore, that a revision of 
King James's version was desirable,* to amend it in 
these and other respects. At length, in 1870, 
the two Houses of Convocation of the English 
Church appointed a committee to take the matter 
into consideration. Their report was favorable to 
the undertaking, and led ultimately to the selec- 
tion of one hundred scholars, of whom sixty-six 
were British and thirty-four Americans. Their 
labors on the New Testament were completed, and 
the book was published in 1881. The Old Testa- 
ment, it is expected, will appear in 1885. 

Such has been the vast outlay of time, toil, 
learning, and expense to give us our English 
Bible. It has extended over a period of five hun- 
dred years, and has employed the highest talents, 
the profoundest learning, and the most saintly 
piety of the nation in that time. It has been 
sealed by the blood of martyrs, and favored with 
the patronage of kings. Upon it has been lavished 
more research and more learning than upon any 
other book the world ever saw, and it has been 
multiplied and circulated in numbers that no 
other lias paralleled.. If it be Our Father's Book, 
the Word of God, it is worthy of it all ; that it 
has commanded all this is most satisfactory evi- 
dence that its claim to be such is just. 



46 our father's book. 

Section II. 

The Hebrew Old Testament. 
By the help of the manuscripts employed by 
our translators, we ascend the past to the time of 
Christ; or more exactly, for the Old Testament, 
to a little less than three hundred years before 
Christ, and for the New Testament, to a hundred 
years after. We fix upon these dates because we 
have undoubted evidence that those books were 
then in existence in substantially their present 
form. And we now repeat the question already 
asked of our English version, whence did they 
come ? 

1. Formation of the Canon. 

The earliest collection of the Old Testament 
books, of which we have certain knowledge, is 
what is called the "Septuagint Version." It is 
true that this does not give them in the Hebrew, 
but in a Greek translation; but that translation 
being made from the Hebrew, because that lan- 
guage had then ceased to be generally spoken, it 
tells us equally well what the Hebrew original was. 
There are, indeed, some discrepancies between 
it and our Hebrew Bibles, which scholars account 
for in different ways, but which are not important 
to our present discussion. 

After Alexander the Great overran Western 
Asia, the Greek language and literature rapidly 



ITS HISTORY. 47 

spread throughout the East. The Hebrew had 
been much corrupted during the captivity, and, 
like other native languages, had been quite gen- 
erally superseded as a spoken tongue by the 
Greek. About B. C. 280, the learned Jews of 
Alexandria in Egypt, which early became a chief 
center of Jewish learning, in order to have their 
Scriptures in a tongue that could be generally un- 
derstood, translated the Pentateuch into Greek. 
This was followed from time to time with other 
portions, so that probably the whole Old Testa- 
ment was extant in that language as early as about 
B. C. 230. Tradition has reported that the num- 
ber of those translators was seventy or seventy- 
two, hence the name, the " Version of the Sep- 
tuaginta," or Seventy. That version we have; 
and it tells us what was the Bible of that date. 
Other evidence to the same effect is given us in 
the enumeration of the sacred books by Josephus; 
also in the Fourth Book of Esdras, and elsewhere. 
This takes us about half way back from Christ's 
time to that of Ezra and Nehemiah. 

There is no reason to suppose that at this last- 
mentioned date — the return from the Captivity 
— there was any definitely established canon of 
the Scripture as a, whole. The law, comprising 
the live Books of Moses, was in their possession, 
and was formally imposed upon the people with 
great solemnity by Ezra and Nehemiah as the 
constitution of the new settlement. Others of 



48 OUR father's book. 

the sacred books were also extant, whose authority 
was acknowledged, and a few were at that time 
written. It was in that interval, therefore, of 
about one hundred and seventy-five years from the 
return to the translation of the Septuagint, — say 
from B. C. 455 to 280, — that the collection and 
arrangement of these into one volume were made. 

The unanimous voice of antiquity assigns this 
work to Ezra himself and his learned associates 
who had returned with him from Babylon. Sev- 
eral of these were themselves prophets, as Zecha- 
riah, Haggai, and Malachi, and perhaps others. It 
is possible that two or three of the very latest 
books had not been composed at that time, — 
such as Daniel, Esther, and perhaps Ecclesiastes. 
The opinions of scholars differ on that point. If 
not, they may have been added by the successors 
of Ezra in the sacred office, and been recognized 
by the synagogues as proper portions of the sacred 
oracles. 

Besides these, there was a considerable body 
of other writings of a religious character which 
claimed acceptance. They are what is known to 
us as " The Apocrypha." They were written in 
Greek, at different dates, and were admitted into 
the Septuagint Version. The Jews, however, did 
not recognize them as authoritative, and they 
formed no part of the sacred canon as described 
by Josephus. 

We are brought, therefore, to the origin of the 



ITS HISTORY. 49 

volume of the Old Testament, as a whole. It 
was at the period when the Jews, returning in 
small and straggling companies from their seventy 
years' servitude in the East, sought, under the 
direction of Ezra and Nehemiah, to lay anew the 
foundations of their city and nation. As their ter- 
rible chastisement from Jehovah had been in con- 
sequence of their neglect of his requirements, they 
would naturally wish to learn anew what they were, 
and make them henceforth their fundamental laws. 
We cannot doubt that these men, a saintly priest 
and a pious magistrate, with their prophetic as- 
sociates, performed their great duties under the 
divine guidance, and the work which they did in 
collecting, supplementing, and arranging the ven- 
erable writings of the past was one of the highest 
dignity and importance. 

2. The Writers. 

There is a further question lying back of all 
we have said, and that is respecting the original 
writers of the sacred books. It is a question of 
no little difficulty, owing to their remote anti- 
quity, and the fact that it was not customary, as 
in modern times, for authors to attach their names 
to their productions. The most we shall be able 
to do is to indicate what seem to be the conclu- 
sions of our ablest scholars and commentators. 

The Pentateuch. — Until quite recent times 
the tradition of the Jews has been accept cm 1, with 



50 OUE father's book. 

but little doubt, that these books were written by 
Moses, and they accordingly bear his name in our 
Bibles. But a theory quite adverse to this has 
been started by certain rationalists of Europe, and 
warmly advocated by Prof. W. Robertson Smith 
of Scotland, through whose lectures chiefly it has 
been introduced into this country. 

It is based mostly on this alleged fact, that the 
great body of the rites and institutions inculcated 
by the Levitical law do not appear to have been 
actually in use during the whole historic period 
from Moses down to the time of King Josiah. 
Instead of a worship celebrated in the tabernacle 
or temple alone, under the ministry of the high 
priest, and with the elaborate ritual required, we 
find altars and high places set up all over the 
land where convenient, and served often by others 
than the priests. The three great festivals of the 
Passover, the Pentecost, and of Tabernacles were 
not observed. The actual religion in exercise in 
both kingdoms was a simpler and freer one than 
that prescribed in the ritual. In a word, the in- 
ference is that the latter was unknown ; i. e., the 
Pentateuch, except those chapters which contain 
the ten commandments and the simple code in 
Exodus 21, 22, and 23, was not written. These 
exceptions, it is conceded, containing, so to speak, 
the kernel of the Hebrew national law, were very 
ancient, and were indisputably from the hand of 
Moses. 



ITS HISTORY. 51 

But the nation ever tended to run into idolatry, 
and bring upon it the divine chastisements for its 
sins. A few years after the captivity of Israel (2 
Kings 17 : 6), the young king Josiah, under the in- 
fluence of the prophets, undertook a reform of his 
kingdom of Judah. During the making of certain 
repairs upon the temple, a book was found and 
brought by the high priest Hilkiah to the king, 
which purported to be the ancient law, long lost, and 
by the neglect of which the judgments of God were 
impending over the nation. That book, it is said, 
was what we now know as the Book of Deuteron- 
omy, from chapter 12 to 26 inclusive, which, as 
the name imports, was in fact the "Second Law." 
It was probably the work of the prophets, who, 
inasmuch as it embodied the spirit of the first code 
given by Moses, represented him as the author of 
this also ; and thus a power was gained which ren- 
dered it efficacious in securing a practical reform 
of the nation. 

But even this was superficial and transient. 
Judah was given up to the fate of her sister 
kingdom, and carried into captivity. During that 
period the prophet Ezekiel was favored with the 
vision of a new temple, and a new, elaborate, and 
complete temple service, as described in the last 
eight chapters of his book, which was to be estab- 
lished for the ritual of the restoration, the new 
state founded by the returned captives under the 
lead of Ezra and Nehemiah. This new, inflex- 



52 our father's book. 

ible, minutely-prescribed establishment, called the 
"priest code," was designed to be a wall of de- 
fense around the people ever after, to make sure 
that they should never again relapse into idolatry, 
and proved in fact successful for that purpose. It 
was reduced into a working form by Ezekiel and 
his associates, and constitutes the ceremonial law 
as contained in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. 
Finally, the three codes thus described were 
" edited " by Ezra, or some of the learned scribes 
associated with him, supplied with an historical 
framework derived from ancient documents, tra- 
ditions, etc., and thus brought into the complete 
and orderly form known to us as the " Penta- 
teuch," or Five Books of Moses. 

We have described this theory so fully because 
it has occupied so large a space in what is called 
the "higher criticism," and has been accepted by 
many as probably true. But the great body of 
scholars have failed to find sufficient evidence to 
support it, and the more it is discussed the more 
disinclined are they to receive it. We cannot go 
at length into the argument; it is sufficient to say 
that the evidence for the Mosaic authorship seems 
ample and decisive. 

It is not doubted, however, that Moses made 
use of more ancient authorities existing in his day, 
especially in composing the Book of Genesis. 
Having been himself educated in the highest 
schools of Egypt, and learned in all the wisdom of 



ITS HISTORY. 53 

the Egyptians, which had come down from a far 
antiquity, he had extensive sources of knowledge 
apart from any supernatural revelation, as to the 
beginning of the world and the origin of nations. 
Neither is it questioned that a few additions, and 
what we may call " editorial notes," were supplied 
by a later hand, as the account of Moses' death, 
the mention of his character for meekness (Num. 
12 : 3), of the Canaanite and the Perizzite (Gen. 
13 : 7), of the king of Edom before there was a 
king in Israel (Gen. 36 : 31), etc. But these do 
not affect the body of the work or constitute any 
substantial reason for doubting that in all essential 
respects these five books should still bear, as they 
have in all ages past, the name of the great He- 
brew lawgiver. 1 

Joshua. — The same things, nearly, are to be 
said of this book, Joshua himself being recognized 
as its author. It is properly a continuation of the 
Pentateuch, as Joshua's work was but the comple- 
tion of that which had been wrought by Moses. 
The last chapter may have been appended by some 
of "the elders that outlived Joshua," to give com- 
pleteness to the narrative. 

Judges and Ruth. — The authorship of these 
books is unknown. The former is, doubtless, a 

1 See able refutations of this theory in " Sources of History in 
the Pentateuch," by President Bartlett; also in "A Vindica- 
tion of the Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch," by Prof. 
Charles Elliott. 



54 our father's book. 

compilation of various records covering the cha- 
otic period of Hebrew history from Joshua to 
Samuel inclusive, about 410 years. The most that 
can be said is that the compiler seems to have 
lived in the days of Saul. He may have been 
Samuel, but it is not probable. 

Ruth is thought to have been written near the 
time of David's highest prosperity. It has been 
suggested that the evidence it affords that David 
was descended in part from a Gentile source, was 
intended to render his sovereignty less forbidding 
to the mixed races whom he had subjected to his 
authority. If so, it must have been prepared by 
David's consent, perhaps by some one of the cul- 
tivated men that dwelt at court under the patron- 
age of the king. 

Samuel. — The two books of Samuel, so named 
not because Samuel was the author, but their 
subject, are also anonymous. They bear in- 
ternal evidence of being compilations from 
various sources, documentary and traditional. 
Their date is probably not far from the time 
of Rehoboam, shortly after the division of the 
kingdom. 

Kings. — The general opinion is that the two 
books of Kings, which in the Hebrew are one, 
were composed by the prophet Jeremiah, or more 
probably, Ezra, during the captivity or shortly 
after. They are professedly derived from older 
writings now lost, as the " Book of the Acts of 



ITS HISTORY. 55 

Solomon" (1 Kings 11:41), the "Book of the 
Chronicles (Heb. the days) of the kings of Ju- 
dah," (1 Kings 14 : 29) and the " Books of the 
Chronicles (days) of the kings of Israel." 1 Kings 
14:19. 

Chronicles. — These two books are supposed 
to be the latest in the canon, with possibly one or 
two exceptions, composed by some learned scribe 
from official sources mostly, about B. C. 330. 

Ezra and Nehemiah are believed to have been 
written by the persons whose names they bear. 
They were anciently appended to 2 Chronicles, 
probably by the compiler of the latter, who 
may have given them some slight touches in 
addition. 

Esther. — The authorship of this book is 
purely conjectural, as is the date. Rawlinson 
assigns it to B. C. 425 ; others a hundred years 
later. 

Job. — Total darkness envelops the author and 
date of this book. It is useless to cite conjectures. 
Possibly a middle period may be deemed most 
probable, say about the time of Solomon. 

The Psalms. — These are collections of re- 
ligious poems by many authors and of different 
dates, from Moses till after the Exile. Moses, 
David, Asaph, Hemtin, and Solomon are the only 
names mentioned as authors, and some of these are 
uncertain. Forty-nine of the Psalms are anony- 
mous. They were originally comprised in five 



56 otjb father's book. 

books collected at different times, principally, it is 
believed, with reference to use in the public service 
in the temple. 

The Pkovebbs. — These also are collections of 
the pithy sayings and maxims of the Hebrew 
sages, chiefly of Solomon. Like the Psalms, they 
were gathered at different times, some, perhaps, in 
the days of Solomon, some by " the men of Heze- 
kiah" (chap. 25:1), three hundred years after, 
and a few at a later date. 

Ecclesiastes. — The traditional conjecture that 
Solomon was the author of this book is now al- 
most universally abandoned. It is attributed to 
some philosophizing writer after the Exile, who 
discussed the perplexing aspects of the present life, 
and reached the conclusion that to fear God and 
keep his commandments was the highest duty and 
good of man. 

The Song of Solomon is now regarded mostly 
in a similar light, as a work not written by Solo- 
mon himself, but about him ; its special purpose 
being to contrast the happiness of a pure and vir- 
tuous love between a single pair with the splendid 
but guilty pleasures of a harem. 

The Pbophets. — It is generally conceded that 
the prophetic books were written by those whose 
names they bear. Doubts have been thrown by 
some upon the authorship of Jonah, and indeed 
upon the historical character of the book, but they 
have not been allowed much weight. The dates 



ITS HISTORY. 57 

of the several books are Usually given as follows, 
arranging them in the order of priority : — 

b. c. 

Obadiah 890-880 

Joel 850 

Jonah 825-790 

Amos 810-783 

Hosea ■ 790-725 

Isaiah 7G0-690 

Micah 753-710 

Nalmm 680 

Zeplianiah 639-609 

Jeremiah 628-583 

Habakkuk 608-590 

Ezekiel 594-535 

Daniel 605-536 

Haggai 520-515 

Zechariah 520-510 

Malachi 443-424 

It will serve to indicate more fully the times 
above specified to note that the destruction of the 
kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians was in B. C. 
722 ; of Judah by the Chaldeans, in B. C. 588 ; 
and of the restoration under Ezra and Nehemiah, 
B. C. 536-446. 

3. Tile Bible in the Time of Chkist. 

The collection of the inspired books thus made 
by Ezra and his associates came down to the time 
of Christ, and though the Hebrew in its ancient 
form had ceased to be commonly spoken, it was 
still preserved in the sacred rolls, and read in the 
synagogue worship of the Sabbath days. In com- 



58 our father's book. 

mon use among the people, the Septuagint, or 
Greek Version, was more frequent. Of these facts 
there is the most abundant and satisfactory testi- 
mony from writers of those times. Our space will 
admit of only that furnished by Josephus, who 
lived about forty years after the crucifixion of 
Christ. 

" We have not a countless number of books, discordant and 
arrayed against each other, but only two and twenty books con- 
taining the history of every age, which are justly accredited as 
divine; and of these five belong to Moses, which contain both 
the laws and the history of the generations of men until his 
death. This period lacks but little of 3,000 years. From the 
death of Moses, moreover, until the reign of Artaxerxes, king 
of the Persians after Xerxes, the prophets who followed Moses 
have described the things which were done during the age of 
each, one respectively in thirteen books. The remaining four 
contain hymns to God and rules of life for men. From the 
time of Artaxerxes, moreover, until our present period, all 
occurrences have been written down ; but they are not regarded 
as entitled to the like credit with those which precede them, 
because there was no certain succession of prophets. Fact has 
shown what confidence we place in our own writings. For, 
although so many ages have passed away, no one has dared to 
add to them, nor to take anything from them, nor to make 
alterations. In all Jews it is implanted, even from their birth, 
to regard them as being the instructions of God, and to abide 
steadfastly by them, and, if it be necessary, to die gladly for 
them."* 

These twenty-two books of Josephus are under- 
stood to be as follows : — 1, Genesis ; 2, Exodus ; 
3, Leviticus; 4, Numbers; 5, Deuteronomy; 6, 
Joshua ; 7, Judges and Ruth ; 8, Samuel (1st and 
* Against Apion, § 8. 



ITS HISTORY. 59 

2d) ; 9, Kings (1st and 2d) ; 10, Chronicles (1st 
and 2d) ; 11, Ezra and Nehemiah ; 12, Esther ; 13, 
Isaiah ; 14, Jeremiah and Lamentations ; 15, 
Ezekiel; 16, Daniel; 17, Twelve Minor Prophets 
(viz., Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 
Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, 
Malachi) ; 18, Job ; 19, Psalms ; 20, Proverbs ; 
21, Ecclesiastes ; 22, Canticles. It is supposed 
that Josephus counted them in this way in order 
to make the entire number 22, corresponding to 
the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Other writers 
of the same period, or later, numbered them some- 
what differently, but the list as a whole com- 
prehended the same books. 

Thus much is sufficient for our present purpose, 
viz., to show what the sacred volume was in the 
days of Christ and the apostles. Further, it not 
only contained the same books, but, as can be 
shown from quotations in the New Testament, 
in the Talmud, in the writings of Josephus and 
Philo, the Jewish Rabbis, and the earliest Chris- 
tian Fathers, it was in all its contents almost 
exactly identical with the volume of the Old Tes- 
tament as we now have it. Not another book of 
antiquity can be named which has come down to 
us in such perfect preservation as this. We are 
not so sure that we have the words which Cicero 
and Virgil and Sallust and Plato and Xenophon 
and Homer actually wrote as those which were 
edited by Ezra, and were actually read on the 



60 our father's book. 

Sabbath in the synagogues of the Jews in all the 

then known world. 

This Book was our Saviour's Bible. We shall 
presently see what he says of its divine authority. 

Section III. 
Tlie New Testament. 
It will doubtless seem surprising to many to be 
told that the formation of the canon of the New 
Testament, — its malce-np, to use a familiar word, 
— is one of the most obscure topics of theology. 
The period within which most of its books were 
written, say from A.D. 50 to 70, and the subse- 
quent one in which they were gathered, arranged, 
and at last formed into an accepted collection, cov- 
ering nearly two centuries, are as a whole the least 
known of all in the history of the Church. Apart 
from the New Testament books themselves, there 
are literally no Christian writings surviving of the 
first centuiy, and comparatively few of the second, 
and these mostly fragmentary. Not that there 
were no Christian writers of that first age, but 
that their genuine productions have mostly per- 
ished, probably because of the persecutions which 
raged at that time. The enemies of Christianity 
sought to destroy all vestiges of it, and often, 
doubtless, Christians themselves would conceal or 
put out of the way any writings in their possession 
which, if found, would endanger their safety. 



ITS HISTORY. 61 

Hence our knowledge of that period is mostly 
derived from tradition, or from the authors of a 
subsequent date, the third century or later, who 
often are silent on points of interest, or confess 
themselves ignorant of them. 

The first form of Christian teaching was oral. 
It was the testimony of the apostles and others 
who had been eye-witnesses of the ministry and 
death of our Lord, and who told the story that 
was subsequently written out in the Gospels. 
Among the Jews this was accompanied with cita- 
tions and arguments drawn from the Old Testa- 
ment to prove that Jesus was the Messiah predicted 
by the prophets. Samples of this preaching are 
seen in Peter's speech on the day of Pentecost, 
Stephen's before his martyrdom, Paul's at Antioch 
of Pisidia, etc. Among the Gentiles a somewhat 
wider scope of topics was employed, as in Paul's ad- 
dress on Mars' Hill. But in all these cases the per- 
sonal testimony was the largest and most impres- 
sive part. " We cannot but speak the tilings which 
we have seen and heard," was a declaration which 
made its way to the heart of both Jew and Greek. 

Thus for twenty years or more after the begin- 
ning of the church on the day of Pentecost, the 
oral instruction of the apostles and their associ- 
ation — men like Philip, Barnabas, Silas, Luke, 
Mark, Timothy, Titus, Apollos, and others — was 
all that was had or was needed. But as time went 
OH the condition of tilings was changed. Chris- 



62 our father's book. 

tianity had spread far and wide. The early- 
preachers had grown old, and many of them 
had died. Troubles were thickening against the 
Jews, which ultimately led to the destruction of 
Jerusalem. Persecution broke out against the 
Christians at Rome. Personal teaching became 
insufficient in these circumstances for the wants 
of the churches. Hence letters began to be ad- 
dressed by the apostles to those whom they could 
not visit in person. The story of the life, teach- 
ings, and miracles of Christ, which had been orally 
related, was written down for preservation after 
the "eye-witnesses" were dead. So, in the course 
of fifty years, — the last half of the first century, 
— a large number of writings came into existence 
bearing the names of Gospels, Epistles, and Acts, 
some still extant, and others now lost, out of which 
ultimately were selected and received as inspired 
that collection which we now have in the New 
Testament. 

The earliest, and therefore the oldest, of these 
is, probably, the Epistle of James. He was not 
an apostle, but one of the four brothers, James, 
Joseph, Judas, and Simon, who, in Mark 6 : 3, are 
called the "brothers " of our Lord. At the time of 
the crucifixion he was not a believer, but became 
such in consequence of a special appearance of the 
Lord to him. 1 Cor. 15 : 7. He was the first 
bishop, or pastor, of the church at Jerusalem, in 
which capacity he presided at the first council 



ITS HISTORY. 63 

held there, to settle the question whether circum- 
cision and the Mosaic law should be enforced 
upon the Gentile converts. Acts 15 : 13-21. The 
church at Jerusalem was the mother church, the 
first, and, till the destruction of that city, doubt- 
less the most numerous of all. Its members, in 
consequence of persecution or in the pursuit of 
business, were scattered abroad through all the 
empire. Here they were subject to hostility and 
oppression both by Jews and heathen ; many were 
poor, and all in great danger of being seduced 
back into Judaism. Hence their pastor, it is sup- 
posed, about the year 50, addressed these absentee 
members of his flock this circular letter, exhorting 
them to steadfastness of faith, to purity of life, to 
patience under poverty and trial, and an unshaken 
trust in the promised Parousia, or coming of the 
Lord, which he assured them was near at hand, 
the Judge and Rewarder even then standing be- 
fore the doors. James 5 : 8, 9. 

At about the same time, and for nearly the 
same purpose, it is believed, the first gospel was 
written, and, as Schaff suggests, may have been 
sent (jut as a companion for said pastoral epistle. 
Almost nothing is known with certainty of the 
apostolic labors of Matthew. Some of the early 
fathers say that his gospel was written first in 
Hebrew, — i.e., the mixed dialect often called 
Aramaean — which was then commonly spoken ii; 
Palestine. If so, he also wrote it in Greek, in 



64 oub father's book. 

which language we now have it, and the Hebrew 
original has been lost. 

The next earliest portions of the New Testa- 
ment are believed to be the two epistles of Paul 
to the Thessalonians, the dates of which are well 
ascertained to be A. D. 53 and 54. His martyr- 
dom at Rome is commonly supposed to have been 
in A. D. 67 or 68 ; hence his other epistles must 
date within the fourteen years intervening. Their 
chronological order is as follows : Galatians, Cor- 
inthians (1st and 2d), and Romans, between 56 and 
58 ; the Epistles of the Captivity, so-called, — i. £., 
written while their author was in prison at Rome, 
— Colossians, Ephesians, Philemon, and Philip- 
pians, between 61 and 62 ; Timothy and Titus un- 
certain, except that 2 Timothy is the latest of all, 
written on the very eve of his execution. 

The Gospel of Luke is supposed to have been 
written at Rome during Paul's imprisonment 
(A. D. 61, 62), in which Luke was Paul's com- 
panion, and was followed almost immediately by 
the Acts of the Apostles, by the same writer. 
The latter ends with that imprisonment. They 
were addressed to a distinguished person named 
Theophilus, conjectured to have been a Greek by 
birth, and a resident of Antioch, in Syria. Luke's 
gospel differs from that of Matthew in having 
been intended for Gentile Christians, especially 
Greeks, as the latter was for Jews. 

The Gospel by Mark is traditionally connected 



ITS HISTORY. 65 

with the preaching of Peter at Rome. The early 
writers agree that he was Peter's " interpreter," 
by which some suppose that he translated the 
apostle's discourses into Latin for the understand- 
ing of the Roman people ; others, that he merely 
committed to writing what was delivered by Peter 
orally. In this, however, is involved another 
difficult question, viz., whether in fact Peter 
ever visited Rome; and if so, when. We cannot 
go into this much-disputed topic. Our impres- 
sion is, from all w r e can gather, that Peter did 
visit Rome near the close of his life, accompanied 
by Mark as his helper (compare Acts 13 : 5) and 
interpreter; that the latter wrote down for the 
use of the Roman church the story of Christ's 
life as Peter had related it, and that this was the 
Gospel by Mark as we now have it. There is a 
tradition that he wrote first in Latin, but it is 
without weight. Latin was indeed the common 
speech of the people, but Greek was more fre- 
quently employed in writing books, especially 
those that were to be circulated through the 
empire. 

Of the remaining books of the New Testament, 
five are believed to have been written in the years 
immediately preceding the overthrow of Jeru- 
salem (A. 1). 70), and while the shadows of that 
great tragedy were beginning to darken the hori- 
zon of the world. The 1st and 2d Epistles of 
Peter seem to have been written at Rome, and 



66 our father's book. 

both speak of that event as just at hand. 
1 Pet. 4 : 7, 12, 17 ; 2 Pet. 3 : 10-13. The latter 
implies also that it was immediately before the 
writer's death. Ch. 1: 14, 15. Jude was a brother 
of James, and, of course, one of the four sons of 
Joseph, reputed to be the brothers of our Lord. 
The Revelation by John is now acknowledged by 
the best writers to have been composed in A. D. 
68 or 69, and to be mainly occupied with matters 
pertaining to the same catastrophe. The Epistle 
to the Hebrews shows in Chap. 10 : 25, 36, 37, that 
it belongs to the same period. 

The Gospel of John and his three Epistles 
come latest in the sacred catalogue. They were 
written in the serene old age of the apostle, prob- 
ably at Ephesus, which had been the principal seat 
of his ministry, and of whose church tradition re- 
ports that he was bishop or pastor. They all date 
from after the destruction of Jerusalem, and prob- 
ably as late as A. D. 98. 

Besides the above twenty-seven books, which 
long since gained a permanent place in the canon 
of the New Testament, there are numerous others 
which have claimed that place, but are classed as 
apocryphal. Some of them are undoubtedly gen- 
uine writings of the early fathers, as some are 
spurious, but they have all been pronounced as 
lacking those credentials which entitle them to be 
received as inspired. Among them are the so- 
called Gospels of James, of the Infancy, of Joseph, 



ITS HISTORY. 67 

of Nicodernus, of Peter, of Thomas, and to the 
Hebrews ; the Acts of Peter and Paul, of Thomas, 
of Thaddeus, and many others; the Epistles of 
Paul and Seneca, the third Epistle of Paul to the 
Corinthians, the Epistle of Mary, the Apocalypse 
of Peter, of Paul, of Thomas, of Stephen, of Mary, 
of Moses, of Ezra, etc. 

Such, as well as can be now ascertained, were 
the origin and dates of the books of the New Tes- 
tament. There is one more question, then, to be 
considered, — In what way was the selection 
made, out of all these writings, of those that were 
to be accepted as inspired, and by what criterion 
was this done ? In other words, how was the 
New Testament canon made up ? 

In reply, we may say of it as of the origin and 
growth of Christianity itself, it came not with ob- 
servation. That selection was made privately and 
spontaneously by the churches, one by one, and 
each for itself, in the exercise of their own intelli- 
gence and judgment. The canon was not made 
up and imposed upon them by anybody. There 
was never any decree of bishop, magistrate, or 
council designating particular books or any par- 
ticular collection of books, to be received as divine. 
There is no recorded vote of any single church 
adopting any one. Such votes there may have 
been; something equivalent there doubtless was; 
but no report of it has come down to us. Conse- 
quently, there is no history of the formation of 



68 our father's book. 

the canon. When history began to speak on the 
subject, it was already formed. The earliest 
writers only state what the canon was, — what 
books in fact were received by all or a part of the 
churches, but say very little or nothing of the 
mode in which they became so. 

The first gleams of information we have on this 
subject are found in some of the later books of 
the New Testament itself. In 2 Pet. 3 : 16, the 
Epistles of Paul are mentioned, and are classified 
with " the other Scriptures." So Jude 17 exhorts 
his readers to " remember the words which were 
spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus 
Christ," who said there should be scoffers in the 
last time. Now just these words are found in 
2 Pet. 3 : 2. Both these references imply that 
the Epistles of Paul and Peter were already extant 
in the churches, at least in some of them, and 
were regarded as of inspired authority. This was 
before the destruction of Jerusalem in A. D. 70. 

The last quarter of the first century, A. D. 
75-100, was the period of the " Apostolical 
Fathers," i. e., of those who had been, in part at 
least, contemporary with the apostles, and had 
been taught by them. The three most eminent 
of these were Clement of Rome, Ignatius of An- 
tioch, and Polycarp of Smyrna, the first two of 
whom died as early as A. D. 107. Some eight or 
ten epistles of these venerable men to the churches 
they had served still remain and are acknowledged 



ITS HISTOKY. 69 

as genuine. All of them are profuse in their 
quotations from the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles, 
as we now have them, with the exception of two 
or three of the smaller books. These quotations 
are not, indeed, usually in the form of express re- 
ference, citing chapter and verse, but they are no 
less unmistakable. A great many of the peculiar 
phrases, to be found nowhere else, are repeated, 
with allusions to " the Gospel," " the Apostle," 
" the glorious and blessed Paul, who, when he was 
among you, taught face to face, and when absent 
sent you some letters," "the holy Epistles," etc. 
No one can read these writings without feeling 
how deeply imbued their authors were with the 
phraseology of the New Testament books. 

During the next fifty years — A. D. 100-150 — 
these references and quotations were greatly mul- 
tiplied. One of the most illustrious fathers was 
Justin Martyr, born in 103, martyred in 167. In 
his apology for the Christians, addressed to the 
Emperor Antonine in 149, he says, speaking of 
them generally : " They read the memoirs of the 
apostles or the Gospels ; they read them each 
Sunday in the cities and in the rural districts; 
they read them with the books of the prophets ; 
and in every assembly where they had been read, 
the president took the subject of his exhortations 
from them." He makes a distinction between the 
two Gospels that were written by apostles and the 
two which were written by their companions 



70 our father's book. 

(Mark and Luke). He says, " There is among us 
a man named John, one of the apostles of Christ, 
who, in a Revelation (apocalypse) which was 
made to him, prophesied that believers in Christ 
shall pass a thousand years in Jerusalem." More 
than seventy similar references and quotations are 
counted in the fragments of his writings now re- 
maining. 

Even Celsus, the famous pagan enemy of Chris- 
tianity, and several of the so-called heretics of that 
age, bear incidental testimony to the existence and 
repute of these sacred writings. They quote 
them, indeed, to oppose and often to revile them, 
but their evidence for that very reason is more 
weighty in proof of the fact that they existed 
and were regarded as inspired. 

The next half century — A. D. 150-200 — pre- 
sents us the names of those eminent fathers, 
Irenseus, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian, 
who attest the existence and authority of our New 
Testament books in a multitude of quotations. 
We have no space for even a tithe of them. Iren- 
seus wrote a long chapter expressly to prove that 
there were four and only four Gospels. He cites 
the Acts sixt}^-four times, and shows its corre- 
spondences with the Epistles of Paul. He quotes 
all these Epistles by name except Philemon, and 
several hundred times in the aggregate. Clement, 
in a single work, quotes sentences from all the 
Gospels, the Acts, all Paul's Epistles, except 



ITS HISTOEY. 71 

Philemon, 1 Peter, 1 and 2 John, Jude, Hebrews, 
and Revelation. Tertullian was a voluminous 
writer, and in all his works constantly refers to 
these writings as the " Scriptures," the "New Tes- 
tament," and "the word of the Creator." He 
quotes all the books as we have them, except per- 
haps the Epistle of James. Lardner remarks : 
"The citations from the New Testament by this 
father alone are more extensive and more abun- 
dant than those from the books of Cicero by all 
the writers of every class and age." 

We have room to mention only one more, the 
illustrious Origen, who was born in A. D. 185 and 
died A. D. 254. He was the most learned man of 
his age, an historian, a public catechiser, a com- 
mentator. He edited the famous Hexapla, or 
Bible in six languages, and wrote a commentary 
on the entire Scriptures. According to Eusebius, 
his Notes and Homilies on Matthew filled twenty- 
five books ; on Luke five, besides homilies in 
Latin ; on John, thirty-two ; on Acts, one ; on 
Romans, twenty ; on Corinthians, Ephesians, and 
Colossians, many ; on Galatians, five ; on 1 Thes- 
salonians and Titus, several ; on Hebrews, several ; 
on Revelation, one. Besides these immense la- 
bors, he has left two formal catalogues of the New 
Testament books, both of them including the same 
we now have, though one of them says that doubts 
were entertained of some smaller books, o( which 
we will speak hereafter. 



72 our father's book. 

It is not necessary to adduce testimony of later 
date, which might be done to any extent. After 
A.D. 200 they were multiplied greatly. The his- 
torians of the church gave numerous catalogues of 
the books received in the East, of those received 
in the West, and of those received by the whole 
church. There are eleven such catalogues of the 
fourth century, of which two were from councils, 
besides several from authors which are probably 
unauthentic. 

Finally, the Emperor Constantine, about A.D. 
331, by imperial command caused fifty copies of 
the New Testament to be made with the greatest 
care upon parchment at his own expense, for the 
public use of the churches of his empire. This 
command was executed by Eusebius, bishop of 
Caesarea and the biographer of the Emperor, and 
of course with all the care required by a commis- 
sion so important. At that time the canon had 
become as well settled as it is now, and identical 
with it. It is the conjecture of Prof. Tischendorf, 
the distinguished discoverer of the precious manu- 
script in the convent of St. Catharine at Mount 
Sinai, that it is one of those identical copies, pre- 
sented to the convent by its founder, the Emperor 
Justinian. 

The New Testament, then, comes to us upon the 
unanimous testimony of the churches as early as 
the very first century. Consider the significance 
of this fact. 



ITS HISTORY 73 

1. It cannot be questioned that the churches 
were competent to decide upon the character and 
claims of those writings. 

It is not always remembered how extensive 
were the personal labors of the apostles and their 
companions in preaching the gospel. Our Lord 
had declared that this should be done among all 
nations before the fall of Jerusalem (Mark 13 : 
10) ; and Paul expressly affirms that it had been 
done (Rom. 16: 26; Col. 1: 23). Bearing this 
in mind, we see how well qualified the churches 
were which originated in such labors to determine 
the genuineness of the writings that appeared 
under the names of their first instructors. Take 
one of Paul's epistles, for instance, — say the ear- 
liest of all, the Epistle to the Thessalonians. Notice 
the many allusions in it to his ministry among 
them, its time and circumstances, what he said to 
them, his message to Timothy and the reply that 
came back, their own experiences and faults, and 
all his mingled reproofs and commendations, and 
we perceive how impossible it is that they should 
be mistaken as to its coming from him, or as to his 
apostolic right and authority to send them such 
a letter. The same thing applies for substance to 
all the epistles. False epistles and false gospels 
could no more have been successfully imposed 
upon the churches before A.I). 100 than a false 
constitution could have been imposed in 1789 
upon the several States of our Union. 



74 our father's book. 

It is to be remembered, also, that these writings 
were, with possibly some exceptions, designed to 
be encyclical, i. e, to be passed around for the 
common instruction of all the churches. Paul 
charged the Thessalonian church by the Lord that 
his communication should be read by all the holy 
brethren (1 Thess. 5: 27). He directed the Colos- 
sians to exchange their epistle with that of their 
neighbors, the Laodiceans (Col. 4 : 16), which 
latter, however, is now lost, unless, as has been 
suggested, it was the same as our present epistle 
to the Ephesians. Peter's allusion to " all Paul's 
epistles " (2 Pet. 3 : 16) shows how extensively 
they were known among the churches of the Dis- 
persion at that early date. The Apocalypse was 
ordered to be sent to the seven churches in Asia, 
but to those evidently as representatives of all 
others. 

Still another fact of importance is that at a very 
early date distinguished writers and historians 
traveled extensively from country to country for 
the very purpose of ascertaining what sacred books 
were in use among the several churches of each. 
Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Clement 
of Alexandria, all traveled through Asia Minor, 
Egypt, and Greece ; of course, communicating as 
well as gaining a knowledge of the subject. 
Thus the churches learned what had been ac- 
cepted by their sister churches, and speedily the 
whole body of them in all countries came into 



ITS HISTORY. 75 

near agreement in this matter. The common code 
of the New Testament became as well fixed as 
that of the Old, and as generally recognized. 

In this fact, then, of the universal acceptance 
of our New Testament books by the churches, we 
have testimony which was contemporary with their 
production, and in every way most competent to 
decide in respect to their character. Writings 
which came from the apostles were, of course, 
accepted at once. All Christians knew that these 
were inspired men, and specially commissioned 
to teach " whatsoever the Lord commanded 
them." If there were any which did not come 
from the apostles, they were scrutinized very 
closely. Mark was accepted because he was the 
well-known companion and "interpreter" of Peter, 
and his Gospel was therefore substantially Peter's 
Gospel. Luke held a similar relation to Paul, 
so that his Gospel and the Acts were virtually 
Paul's. The Epistle to the Hebrews, not bear- 
ing an apostle's name, was held in doubt for a 
little while by some, but full inquiry and inter- 
change of views finally led to its acceptance, though 
we do not know exactly on what ground other 
than that, if not from an apostle, it was in full 
accord with the apostolic writings, and had apos- 
tolic approval. James and Jude were our Lord's 
brothers, the former the pastor of the mother- 
ohurch at Jerusalem, and both the intimate com- 
panions of the apostles, and partakers of the inspi- 



76 our father's book. 

ration bestowed on the day of Pentecost. Thus 
the early churches knew both the authors of these 
books and their genuineness, and their testimony 
comes to us with a degree of force which admits 
no ground for any reasonable doubt. 

2. Not only was this competent testimony, but 
it was given under the influence of motives which 
insured the highest truthfulness. 

For, let us remember, that these early churches 
based their own spiritual hopes on the truth of 
these writings. The converts from Judaism 
turned their backs on the venerable institutions of 
Moses, which they had been taught to believe, as 
all their countrymen did believe, were the only 
means of salvation. Gentile converts forsook the 
wisdom of sages for the foolishness of the cross. 
Neither could have done this if they had not been 
sure of the premises on which their new faith was 
founded. No man in his senses ever rested his 
soul's everlasting interests on grounds which he 
knew had no foundation in truth. 

This acceptance of Christianity, moreover, was 
social separation from all that they held dear. Jews 
anathematized them as heretics ; Gentiles branded 
them as fools. They were held and treated as the 
offscouring of all things. It was literally true 
that to become a Christian, a man must " hate his 
father and mother, and wife and children, and 
brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also." 
We are very certain that they who had to accept 



ITS HISTORY. 77 

the new faith upon such a penaltjr would scrutinize 
its foundations with all possible care. Documents 
of doubtful authenticity or genuineness or author- 
ity could not stand against the intense yearnings 
of human hearts over separations like these. 

Nay, more ; to accept the words of Peter and Paul 
and John, and obey them, was, in vast multitudes 
of instances, to doom the believer to martyrdom. 
It was to be stoned at Jerusalem, to be scourged 
at Damascus, to be thrown to wild beasts in the 
Coliseum, or be crucified in the gardens of Nero 
at Rome. Now, men and women do not do such 
things in a cause which they know is a doubtful 
one. They do not die the most horrible deaths in 
obedience to authority which they know may be 
questioned. Let them have rejected the Christian 
writings ; let them have said the Evangelists wrote 
myths, and Paul was mistaken, and the like (and 
remember they had the best possible opportunities 
for knowing if it was so), then they would have 
had no trouble. Life would have been secure ; 
friends would have smiled upon them ; priests 
and governors would have loaded them with 
honors. Instead of this they believed, and died. 
And every drop of their blood, every pang suffered 
in the flames and on the cross, attested that they 
knew the teachings they had received were true. 
The sacred writings they had believed were gen- 
uine, were inspired, were divine. 

Such, then, is the testimony which has come to 



78 oun father's book. 

us from the early churches in behalf of these New 
Testament books. It is competent testimony, and 
it is honest. From the very early period in which 
it comes ; from the opportunities they had of know- 
ing the facts ; from the infinite motives they were 
under to inquire carefully and make a correct 
judgment, a conclusion which we know they 
made, in the clear consciousness that it would 
take them to the martyr's stake ; from the absolute 
unanimity of their testimony, there being not a 
church in all Christendom in any age that ever 
dissented from it, however much they may have 
differed in everything else, — from all these facts 
combined, the result comes to us with irresistible 
force of conviction that these writings are what 
they purport to be. They were from the pens of 
men who were plenarily authorized to teach in 
the name of Christ, and who spake and wrote as 
they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Their 
words are the word of God. 



CHAPTER IV. 

ITS DIVINE AUTHORITY. 

We have thus sketched in outline the history 
of the Bible, both as a whole and in its several 
parts, beginning at our own day, and going back 
through the several stages of translation, the for- 
mation of the canon, and the original authorship. 
It devolves on us now to show how this is a Divine 
gift, brought to us through all this human history 
by God, and constituting what we have called 
" Our Father's Book." 

The claim thus made for it involves what is 
technically known as the doctrine of Inspiration. 
As usually treated, it is one of no little difficulty, 
giving rise to considerable differences of opinion, 
both as to the fact itself and its nature. That 
difficulty, as it seems to us, results largely from a 
too-restricted view of the word "inspiration," as 
implying always a direct divine influence upon 
the minds of the writers, dictating the words they 
should record, or the thoughts, or both. Such an 
influence does not seem to be asserted, at least in 
all cases, by the book itself, and it is doubtful if it 
be susceptible of proof. Inasmuch, then, as our 

70 



80 our father's book. 

greatest difficulty lies precisely here, let us, before 
we attempt the proof of the doctrine, endeavor to 
get a clear idea of what the term means. 

Section I. 

Nature of Inspiration. 

We can best give our view of this subject by 
the help of the illustration before used. Suppose 
an intelligent boy of fifteen should receive a birth- 
day gift of books from his father. They are of 
various kinds and from many authors, and they are 
accompanied by a note expressive of his father's 
affection, and saying that they are given in the 
hope of affording him valuable instruction as to 
his course in life. And suppose that a friend, 
examining these books and learning of their con- 
tents, should express grave doubts whether they 
actually came from his father. 

" Your father certainly did not write these." 

" No, but they came to me from him just the 
same." 

" But they are not all books of instruction ; here 
are history and poetry and letters and old records, 
etc. You can 't call these your father's counsels 
to you, can you ? " 

"Certainly, that is the form he chose to put 
them in ; that is the way he wants to convey his 
will. He gave them to me for that purpose. Here 
is his own declaration to that effect." 



ITS DIVINE AUTHORITY. 81 

" But there is a small book in the midst of the 
set of which nobody knows the origin. There is 
no name nor date to it ; you don't suppose that 
came from your father, do you ? " 

" Why not ? If I don't know who wrote it or 
when, perhaps he does. At any rate, he judged 
it suitable for his purpose, and so he selected and 
put it into the collection. It came with the other 
books, and is from him, just as much as they are." 

" Well, but here is one which contains false and 
pernicious things. It says the world was made in 
six days, and your father knows it was not. He 
understands the science of geology, and would 
not give you to read the crude ideas and guesses 
of former days about such things. There is an- 
other that tells of dreadful wars and bloodshed ; 
of fearful cruelties practiced upon conquered peo- 
ples, and of the false and barbarous sentiments 
which prevailed in those ignorant ages, even 
among the best people of those times. Such a 
book as that could not have come from your 
father?" 

" But it did. I do not know about there being 
anything untrue in form, or false in sentiment 
and practice ; but even if there is, can I not learn 
from these as well as from the opposite ? I sup- 
pose my father thought I had common sense, and 
could distinguish between what was good and bad 
in itself. I certainly am not silly enough to imag- 
ine that, because such and such things are inserted 



82 our father's book. 

in these books, he approves of them, or would 
want to have me do or be like them. My father 
has given them to me for my instruction, and 
they are infinitely better than they would be if 
they were all sermons and moral essays and com- 
mands, of which I should be heartily sick in a 
single week." 

It is needless to pursue this imaginary conversa- 
tion further ; indeed, we owe an apology to our 
readers for having supposed it necessary to intro- 
duce it at all. And yet upon this simple point 
has turned one of the chief difficulties in admit- 
ting the inspiration of the Bible. If God did not 
with his own fingers write it, or if he did not dic- 
tate it word by word to those that did, how can it 
have come from him ? And our answer is, it came 
because what he did not write or dictate he selected 
for the purpose. If a man may make up a library 
in that way, so may God. And a library so made 
up and so given becomes just as much his gift, 
expressive of his will, and clothed with his author- 
ity, as if it had been graven with his divine fingers 
on the tablets of stone. 

Consider how many things are involved in it. 

1. It might include the composition of the 
books, or a part of them, by personal writing or 
through an amanuensis. This mode, of course, is 
not excluded; we only insist that it is not the 
only one, or indispensable. So there are parts of 
the Bible which were God's own words, taken 






ITS DIVINE AUTHORITY. 83 

down from his lips or given by dictation through 
prophets and apostles. 

2. It would involve the selection and instruc- 
tion of those who were to make up the library ; 
person's of experience and discretion, to whom he 
might communicate his wishes, and who would 
know best what would subserve the end in view. 
Such men were selected and employed in making 
up the Bible ; prophets and learned scribes in the 
ancient church, and holy fathers who had known 
the apostles or their disciples in the new. These 
men were imbued with the Spirit of God, and 
were the representatives of the collective body of 
God's people in whom the Spirit has dwelt from 
age to age, and which is affirmed to be " the pillar 
and ground of the truth.'' Even, therefore, though 
we knew nothing of the original authors, yet any 
body of writing which the whole church accepted 
spontaneously to meet its spiritual wants and to 
be the vehicle of its communion with God may 
safely be regarded as more certainly given by him 
than if it only bore the prestige of a single great 
name, — as Ezra, or Isaiah, or David, or Samuel, 
or Moses. It would, indeed, include the combined 
inspiration of all, inasmuch as the inspiration of 
the whole church must be greater than that of a 
part of it. 

3. It would involve the transmission of the li- 
brary to the son, and, to accomplish this, its careful 
protection against being lost, or stolen, or damaged 



84 our father's book. 

iii any way. Wonderful has been the evidence of 
God's ownership of the Bible. No other book of 
the age of Moses, or David, or Isaiah, unless in 
the cerements of some forgotten mummy, has ever 
come down to our day. Of none of the age of 
the New Testament has one been preserved in 
such integrity. It has ever had innumerable 
enemies, the malice of persecutors, the casualties 
of war and fire, the unwearied assaults of unbe- 
lievers in numberless forms, nevertheless the book 
has survived through all. Nay, it is as young and 
fresh as if it came yesterday from the press, and is 
diffusing itself with a rapidity surpassing that of 
any other period, making its existence, its ubi- 
quity, and moral power over men and nations, the 
most wonderful phenomenon of the age. 

Now, all these things go together to make up 
that grand result, — the gift of God's word to 
men. We include them all in that much misap- 
prehended word, "inspiration." It comprehends 
whatever Our Father has done to provide for us 
this precious and venerated volume. It has oper- 
ated through a long series of years, and in a vari- 
ety of ways. It caused some to write, some to 
compile, some to copy, some to adopt unchanged. 
The result is this Book. The waters of a hundred 
fountains have been gathered to supply its ample 
stream. Those fountains may be remote, obscure, 
unknown to men. Whether they were natural or 
artificial, living springs evoked from the recesses 



ITS DIVINE AUTHORITY. 85 

of the hills by the Creator's own hand, or rising 
from deep wells dug by patriarch or prophet, they 
alike flow along channels prepared for them by a 
Divine hand, till they meet and mingle in this 
14 river of the water of life." 

Bearing in mind, then, these distinctions, and 
definitions of the term " inspiration," we claim for 
this Book the following things : — 

1. The Bible is an inspired Booh. It is the 
work of the Spirit of God acting through the ages 
to this result, the production of works which, each 
in its day, served for the divine guidance of those 
to whom they were sent, and at length, when col- 
lected and completed in one volume, were given 
to the world to be to them through all time " the 
oracles of God." 

2. The Bible is ivholly inspired. No matter as 
to the remote origin or composition of some por- 
tions of it, the Divine Spirit by adoption, if not by 
dictation, made them his own, and placed them in 
this book for mankind. The proof that he did so 
we will consider at another time ; we now simply 
assume it. And this divine action — which we 
call Inspiration — extended to all and every part 
of it. If a father's Christmas present included 
sixty-seven volumes, they were all selected and 
put there by him alike, the first, the fifth, the 
twentieth ; the large ones and the small ones ; the 
history as well as the prophecy; the songs as well 
as the essays; the anonymous as well as those 



86 our father's book. 

whose authors appended their names. To attempt 
to single out a portion as the father's gift and 
exclude the rest is a simple impertinence, insulting 
to him as implying that he did not know what was 
best for the purpose in view. 

3. The Bible is verbally inspired. That is, the 
words were given to men just as truly as the 
thoughts. Indeed, it is the words which make up 
the Book, and you could not have the Book with- 
out the words. In selecting a volume to put into 
the library, the father selects the words which are 
in the volume. If it is in rhyme, he selects the 
rhymes ; if an acrostic, like several of the Psalms, 
he selects the acrostic ; if a quotation in another 
language, as in Mark 5 : 41, or 1 Cor. 16 : 22, he 
selects the quotation ; if in the singular number, 
as in Gal. 3 : 16, he adopts that number. So in 
all cases. Whatever the Book is, that is his gift 
to us. Of course, we have reference to the origi- 
nals, not our English translation; and the originals 
in their purity, not to any errors which have crept 
in by transcribing or accident of any sort. 

4. Once more, the Bible, as an inspired book, is 
complete. That is, in legal phrase, as a written 
revelation, it contains " the truth, the whole truth, 
and nothing but the truth." There is no reason to 
suppose that any thing which was ever intended 
to be a part of it has been lost out, nor that any 
thing now in it was not intended to be there. The 
volume of a father's letters contains all that he 



ITS DIVINE AUTHORITY. 87 

wrote for it, and contains nothing else. The birth- 
day gift is complete, just as the loving Giver de- 
signed it. 

Section II. 

Proofs of Inspiration. 

The way is now prepared for us to consider the 
evidence of the fact of inspiration, which has here- 
tofore been assumed while we exhibited its char- 
acteristics and history. 

The subject in its entire range is very wide ; its 
details innumerable. A few considerations from 
the form and method of the book and its uninter- 
rupted transmission to us through so many ages 
have been already presented. Very much more 
might be shown of the exalted character of the 
system of truth which it contains, the wisdom and 
beneficence of its laws, the purity of its morals, 
and the grace displayed in the plan of salvation 
it reveals for mankind. We cannot enter into 
these matters here, but must confine ourselves 
to a single topic which by all Christians is wont 
to be considered the most direct and conclusive 
so far as relates to the Old Testament, viz., the 
testimony of Christ and the apostles. It is not, of 
course, the evidence that is to be urged against 
atheists and infidels, who reject the authority of 
Christ himself, but it will be admitted as sufficient 
by all who pretend to be Christians. 

We have before shown that the volume of what 



88 ouk father's book. 

we call the Old Testament Scriptures, both in the 
original Hebrew and in the venerable Greek ver- 
sion of the Septuagint, was in common use among 
the Jews in the time of our Saviour. Everybody 
knows that it was regarded by them as the word 
of God. Josephus says, "We have twenty-two 
books which are justly credited as divine." Philo 
calls them the " sacred Books," the " most holy 
Writing," the " Oracle of God." The New Tes- 
tament everywhere shows us in what estimation it 
was held by all classes. The Talmuds and Rab- 
binical writings are simply commentaries and 
explanations designed to show its meaning and 
authority. Even the superstitions that were in- 
dulged in respecting it only the more strikingly 
demonstrate their veneration for what was to them 
God's word, which might not be added to or 
diminished by so much as a single letter. Thus 
the Talmuds say that when God changed the 
name of Abraham's wife from Sarai to Sarah, he 
took care to save the letter i (Heb. yod), from 
being lost because it had been written in, and 
was, therefore, a part of the law. He prefixed it 
to the name of Hoshea, the aid and successor of 
Moses, making it Iehoslmah (Joshua). It had 
been at the end of a woman's name, but was now 
honored in being put in front of the man's. 

It was amid such views of the sacred volume, 
and into such beliefs of its origin and authority, 
that our Lord Jesus Christ was educated. Of 



ITS DIVINE AUTHORITY. 89 

course, he rejected the superstitions and false 
interpretations that prevailed, but that he accepted 
its divine character is evident from all his words 
and conduct. Says Canon Geikie, " Mary and 
Joseph, we can scarcely doubt, were themselves 
the earliest teachers of Jesus. At their knees he 
must first have learned to read the Scriptures. 
Pious Jewish parents took especial care to have a 
manuscript of the Law in the old Hebrew charac- 
ters, as their especial domestic treasure. Even so 
early as the Asmonean kings, B. C. 163, such rolls 
were so common in private houses that the fury 
of the Syrian king, who wished to introduce the 
Greek customs in religion, was especially directed 
against them. In Joseph's day the supreme in- 
fluence of the Rabbis and Pharisees must have 
deepened into a passion the desire to possess such 
a symbol of loyalty to the faith of Israel. Richer 
families would have a complete copy of the Old 
Testament on parchment, or on Egyptian papyrus. 
Humble homes would boast a copy of the Law or 
a Psalter, and all alike gloried in the verses on 
their door-posts and in their phylacteries. Chil- 
dren had small rolls containing the S'chema, or 
the Hallel, or the history of creation to the flood, 
or the first eight chapters of Leviticus. 

" His deep knowledge of the Scriptures shows 
itself throughout the Gospels. He lias a quotation 
ready to meet every hostile question. It was so 
profound that it forced even his enemies to recog- 



90 our father's book. 

nize him as a Rabbi. His frequent retort on the 
Rabbis themselves, — c Have ye not read? ' — and 
the deep insight into the spirit of Scripture which 
opposes to rubrics and forms the quickening power 
of a higher life, prove how intensely he must have 
studied the sacred books, and that the zeal that 
drew him in his boyhood to the temple school at 
Jerusalem to hear them explained was the sacred 
passion of his life. In the Gospels we find two 
quotations from Genesis, two from Exodus, one 
from Numbers, two from Deuteronomy, seven from 
the Psalms, five from Isaiah, one from Hosea, one 
from Jonah, two from Malachi, two from Daniel, 
one from Micah, and one from Zechariah, respec- 
tively. The whole of the Old Testament was as 
familiar to him as the ' Magnificat ' shows it to 
have been to his mother Mary. It was from the 
clear fountain of the ancient oracles his childhood 
drank in the wisdom that cometh from above. 
They had been his only school-book, and they 
were the unwearying joy of his own life. From 
them he taught the higher spiritual worship which 
contrasted so strongly with the worship of the 
letter. It was to them he appealed when he 
rejected what was worthless and trifling in the re- 
ligivHis teaching of his day." 1 

To require a distinct formal declaration from 
one who habitually employed it thus, that the 
Old Testament is inspired, would be absurd. As 
1 Vol. I. chap. xvi. pp. 238, 239. 



ITS DIVINE AUTHORITY. 91 

well demand a formal declaration in all our courts 
that the Constitution is the supreme law. It was 
the one thing that was assumed as a matter of 
course ; the thing that nobody disputed; the first 
principle of all authority and all belief. And yet 
many utterances of his may be cited which are 
equivalent. We will give a few specimens. 

1. He declared that his mission was not to 
abrogate or weaken its authority. " Think not 
that I came to destroy the lav/ or the prophets ; I 
came not to destroy but to fulfill." Matt. 5 : 17. 
"The Law and the Prophets" was a common desig- 
nation of the Scriptures, as sometimes the Law 
was alone, and sometimes the fuller title " The 
Law, the Prophets and the Psalms." Of course, 
his hearers would understand him as referring to 
that collection of writings which had then been 
embraced in the sacred canon, and which we have 
in a single volume. It was important to him in the 
outset of his ministry thus to declare that he did 
not propose to teach a new religion, but the old 
one in a purer and higher form ; to develop out 
of that sacred source of all wisdom its inner spirit 
and life, and so to fulfill, t. £., to fill out and com- 
plete, what had hitherto been apprehended in the 
letter. Then he adds, in a formula of the most 
emphatic confirmation, "For verily I say unto 
you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or 
one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law- 
till all things be accomplished*" It is not possible 



92 our father's book. 

to conceive of any higher sanction being given to 
a book than this. 

2. He severely reproved the Jews, notwith- 
standing their professed reverence for the divine 
commands, for making it void through their tradi- 
tions. " Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, 
hypocrites. Ye leave the commandment of God 
and hold fast the tradition of men. For Moses 
said, Honor thy father and mother, and he that 
speaketh evil of father or mother let him die the 
death, thus making void the word of God through 
your tradition." Mark 7: 6-13. Observe, here, how 
Jesus throws the sanctity of God's word over the 
Pentateuch, the very five books of Moses as we 
have them, without any hint of a question as to 
the authorship of those books. So we may say, 
whatever the criticism of our day may conclude as 
to that question, if the Pentateuch was the word 
of God to Christ, it is his word doubly confirmed 
to us. 

3. He commanded the Jews to search the 
Scriptures for proof of the validity of his claims, 
and declared that they were his Father's testi- 
mony, and their teachings throughout centered 
upon him. " The Father which sent me, he hath 
borne witness of me. Search the Scriptures — 
these are they which bear witness of me. I receive 
not glory from men." John 5 : 37-41. " All things 
must needs be fulfilled which are written in the 
Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms, 






ITS DIVINE AUTHORITY. 93 

concerning me. Then opened he their minds that 
they might understand the Scriptures. And he 
said unto them, Thus it is written — that the 
Christ should suffer," etc. Luke 24: 44. All this 
is without meaning but upon the fundamental 
assumption that those Scriptures were divine ; that 
they revealed the mind of God, and were to be 
received as decisive of any fact to which they 
might testify. 

4. So, in defending himself against the accusa- 
tions of his enemies, Christ habitually referred to 
the Scriptures as authoritative and final. In 
calling God his Father, they said he blasphemed, 
making out that he was a son of God. " Well," he 
replied, "your law calls civil magistrates gods. 
Have I said anything worse than that? Now that 
was the word of Grod, — and the Scripture cannot 
be broken," — i. e., treated as void, or using 
terms improperly. The particular portion of 
Scripture alluded to in this case was Ps. 82:6. 
How clearly does he thus attribute to the entire 
volume the title of "the Law," and make it the 
divine word, and the standard of all right and 
propriety. 

But, as we have remarked, it is needless to cite 
specific formal declarations of our Lord on the 
point before us. His entire course of teaching 
was an unfolding and amplification of the Old 
Testament Scriptures as the divine charter of his 
mission, the foundation of the new kingdom of 



94 our father's book. 

heaven, which was to be built on the everlasting 
covenant of God, as given to Abraham and Moses 
and the prophets. 

And let it be noted, too, that this recognition 
of its authority extended over the entire volume. 
Never does he single out one part of it at the 
expense of another part. Never does he distin- 
guish between known and unknown authors. 
Never does he speak of those who were more and 
those who were less inspired. Never does he 
concede divine guidance to those that recorded 
revelations beyond that granted to those that 
wrote history, or compiled genealogy, or edited 
fragments of antediluvian tradition and song, or 
told unscientifically the story of creation and the 
fall of man, or tuned the sweet pastoral " Song of 
songs, which is Solomon's." If he did not quote 
from every one of them for doctrine, for reproof, 
for correction, for instruction in righteousness, it 
was not because he did not recognize their place 
in the sacred canon, but simply because they did 
not contain what was relevant to the matter in 
hand. He made no difference between the primary 
and secondary writer; between the Elohist and 
Jehovist ; the* author and the redactor ; the Psalms 
which celebrate the names and titles of Jehovah, 
and the book of the beautiful Jewish queen, in 
which the divine name does not once occur. To 
him the entire volume was a unit, and it was the 
Word of God. The temple itself was made up 



TTS DIVINE AUTHORITY. 95 

of parts. It had its courts, outer and inner ; its 
gates, some more and some less beautiful ; its apart- 
ments of ever-varying use and dignity, from the 
closets which stored wood and ashes and salt, up 
to the awful, unapproachable Holy of Holies ; but 
it was one sacred, august edifice throughout. It 
was the house of God. So the volume of the 
Scriptures, amid all its diversity in age, style, 
contents, authorship, diction, is one book, God's 
gift to man, that he may be made wise unto salva- 
tion. This book was our Saviour's Bible, doubly 
sanctioned to us in his acceptance and love, and 
doubly confirmed to us by his own divine author- 
ity as the Word of God. 

Not less positive and abundant were the similar 
testimonies of the apostles, whom our Lord ap- 
pointed to be the official instructors of his church, 
and to whom he gave those supernatural gifts 
which clothed their words with his own supreme 
authority. 

These apostles were Jews, and as such shared 
in those opinions respecting the Scriptures which 
were common to all their countrymen. Nor is 
there any evidence that, in accepting the Christian 
faith, their views in this respect we*e altered in 
any degree, except to become stronger and more 
reverent. In very many matters of their Jewish 
training their opinions underwent great change. 
The whole system of Mosaic institutions they be- 
lieved to be superseded by the gospel. Rites and 



96 our father's book. 

forms which they had been taught to consider as 
of the highest sanctity had become obsolete. The 
way of salvation and the divine requirements 
of men were, as the}' thought, new. But the 
Scriptures were still the Word of Grod. No jot of 
sanctity or authority had vanished from them. 
No less deference was to be paid to their lightest 
utterance. Nay, when St. Paul, after showing that 
Jews as well as Gentiles were alike sinners before 
God notwithstanding all their distinguishing his- 
tory and spiritual privileges, and needed the same 
salvation as they, put into the mouth of an objec- 
tor the astonished inquiry, " What advantage then 
hath the Jew, and what is the profit of circum- 
cision ? " he answered unhesitatingly and trium- 
phantly, " Much every way ; first of all that they 
were entrusted with the oracles of God ! " This was 
the highest of all distinctions, because these were 
the most holy and precious of all gifts. 

The testimony of the apostles to the point be- 
fore us is so abundant and varied that we can only 
give specimens. 

1. They declare that these writings are holy. 
Rom. 1:2. " The gospel which God promised 
afore by his prophets in the holy Scriptures." 
2 Tim. 3: 15. "From a child thou hast known 
the holy Scriptures.'' Observe that this term is 
applied to the sacred volume collectively, contain- 
ing the very same books which we have, with all 
their diversity of authorship, subjects, style, and 



ITS DIVINE AUTHORITY. 97 

character. In this respect they all stand on the 
same footing ; they are all " the holy writings.' 5 

2. They affirm that these Scriptures are inspired 
of Grod. 2 Tim. 3 : 16. " Every Scripture inspired 
of God is profitable," etc. Here the assertion is 
made of them not only collectively but singly. 
They are taken one by one, and " every one " de- 
clared to proceed from the divine inbreathing. 
2 Pet. 1 : 21. " Men spake from God, being moved 
by the Holy Spirit." Heb. 1:1. " God, having of 
old time spoken unto the fathers in the Prophets." 
Heb. 3:7. " The Holy Spirit saith." Rom. 16 : 26. 
" By the Scriptures of the prophets according to 
the commandment of the eternal God." Acts 1 : 16. 
" The Scriptures which the Holy Spirit spake be- 
fore by the mouth of David." 

3. They represent the utterances of the Scrip- 
tures as clothed with plenary authority. Whatever 
they say is decisive. Instances without number 
may be cited. Acts 17 : 2. " For three Sabbath 
days Paul reasoned with them from the Scrip- 
tures." Acts 17:10. "They searched the Scrip- 
tures daily whether these things were so." Rom. 
4:3. " What saith the Scriptures ? " 1 Cor. 15 : 3. 
"Christ died for our sins according to the 
Scriptures," etc. Everywhere in the Epistles, the 
Scriptures are made the umpire to decide doubt- 
ful points and confirm the statements that are 
put forth. 

4. They attach a divine authority to the very 



98 ojjr father's book. 

words, and even the grammatical forms of words, 
in the sacred writings. In Rom. 4 : 3, the doctrine 
of justification is built upon the word " counted " 
(R. V. " reckoned "). In Rom. 6 : 2, the duty of 
Christian holiness on the word " died." In Rom. 
12 : 27, the steadfastness of the gospel on the 
single Greek word translated " once more." In 
Gal. 3 : 16, the unity of the church of God on the 
singular number of the word " seed," not " seeds." 
Can we doubt what was the habitual way of re- 
garding this volume by those to whom its very 
words and grammatical forms were thus sufficient 
to determine the gravest truths of doctrine ? 

5. They assign it as a special mark of high 
qualifications as a teacher that one is " mighty in 
the Scriptures." Acts 18:24. And this, which 
was asserted of Apollos, is one of the reasons why 
the authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews is 
now by many ascribed to him. That Epistle 
shows a familiarity with all the details of the 
Mosaic institutions, and a skill in developing their 
spiritual import, which well entitle its writer to 
such a designation. 

6. They constantly represent the gospel itself 
as but the outcome of the Old Testament Scriptures. 
Christ himself was the object to which all prophecy 
converged. Acts 17 : 2. " Paul, as his custom was, 
for three Sabbath days reasoned from the Scrip- 
tures, opening and alleging that it behoved the 
Christ to suffer and to rise again from the dead." 



ITS DIVINE AUTHORITY. 99 

John 5 : 39. " These are they which bear witness 
of me." 1 Cor. 15 : 3, 4. " Christ died for our sins 
according to the Scriptures." He " was buried 
and rose again according to the Scriptures." The 
Epistle to the Hebrews devotes itself in particular 
to the one purpose of showing that all the Chris- 
tian doctrines are but the development and fruit- 
age of the earlier system revealed in the rites and 
record of the Old Testament. Rom. 1:2. " The 
gospel was promised afore by the prophets in the 
holy Scriptures." The evangelists, in recording 
the works and sayings of Christ, habitually add, 
that in them was " fulfilled what was spoken of 
the Lord by the prophets." Thus the ancient 
writings are everywhere made the fountain from 
which the entire new dispensation proceeds, its 
divine Head, its institutions, its teachings. Even 
the church itself is built " upon the foundation of 
the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself 
being the chief corner-stone." Eph. 3: 20. 

7. They represent the Scriptures to be a safe 
and sure ground on which to build our faith and 
hope. 2 Pet. 1 : 19. " We have the more sure 
word of prophecy, whereunto ye do well to lake 
heed." 2 Tim. 3: 16. "Every Scripture is profit- 
able for doctrine, for instruction in righteousness, 
that the man of God may be complete, furnished 
completely unto every good work." *The holy 
Scriptures which are able to make thee wise unto 
salvation." 



100 OTJB FATHER'S BOOK. 

8. They declare that to pervert the Scriptures 
is to endanger the soul. 2 Peter 3 : 16. " The 
ignorant and unsteadfast wrest Paul's Epistles, 
as they do the other Scriptures, unto their own 
destruction." 

But these explicit testimonies of the apostles in 
so many ways, striking as they are, come far short 
of exhibiting the whole truth. No one can read 
their writings carefully without perceiving that 
they were perfectly imbued in thought and feel- 
ing with the letter and spirit of the Scriptures in 
which they had been taught ; and if we may so say, 
were in their spiritual natures as much the product 
of those Scriptures as the vegetation is the product 
of the sunlight in which it has its life. Professor 
Stuart, on the Canon, gives over six hundred in- 
stances of quotations from the Old Testament by 
the writers of the New. He says : " No one who 
has an intimate acquaintance with both Testa- 
ments in their original languages can possibly fail 
to recognize the numberless transfers of the spirit 
and modes of expression from the Old to the New. 
It is a thing to be felt, and not to be adequately 
described. It occurs so often everywhere, and in 
respect to everything, that one would not know 
where to begin or where to end such a description. 
No one must imagine that the list of quotations or 
cases of allusion above cited conveys to him any 
really adequate view of the subject. The truth is 
that it is no more than the mere beginning of 



ITS DIVINE AUTHORITY. 101 

such a view. But it presents to every reader, 
whether learned or unlearned, what is palpable 
and undeniable, and what must serve to convince 
a candid mind that the New Testament writers 
everywhere lean upon, or stand closely connected 
with, the writers of the Old Testament." 

The evidence now advanced, in this section and 
the last, must, we are sure, be sufficient for every 
one who accepts the declarations of our Lord himself 
and his apostles that the Old Testament Scriptures 
are the Word of God. Their origin and authority 
were derived from him. Whatever difficulties 
we may find in the external history, and in the 
form, structure, and diction of these ancient books, 
are covered by these clear testimonies of those who 
are our recognized supreme teachers in divine 
things. Our argument is not with the atheist or 
infidel, who reject Christ himself, and deny that 
there is or can be any revelation, or any God to 
give one. We write for Christians, who believe in 
God our Father, and who desire to see his name 
and word in " Our Father's Book." 



CHAPTER V. 

THE DIVINE MEANING DISCERNED. 

The testimony of Christ and his apostles to the 
divine authority of the Bible, while conceded to 
be sufficient to establish the fact, leaves still 
something wanting to its full effect. We accept, 
of course, a truth of which we are assured on 
competent authority, while at the same time it 
adds to the strength of our convictions if we can 
also see the truth. By what rule, then, can we 
discern what is divine in the Bible ? How, in a 
book that is confessedly written by man, and is so 
varied in its contents, can we discover the word 
of God? The inquiry is needful, not only to 
complete our study of its inspiration, but also to 
enable us to ascertain the divine thought and will 
for our own spiritual instruction. 

Some years ago we presented to a lad of four- 
teen, as a birthday gift, one of A. L. O. E.'s 
excellent books for boys, entitled, " The Giant- 
Killer." As we remember it, it was an allegorical 
narrative illustrating the mode in which the 
faults that beset that period of life may be over- 
come under the guise of a warfare against the 
102 



THE DIVINE MEANING DISCERNED. 103 

"giants." The purpose of the gift, of course, was 
to be an incentive to a pure and manly character. 
Suppose, now, it had been asked of him, what did 
your pastor intend to teach you by this book ? 
The words were the author's, but he has chosen 
them to convey to you his instruction. What, 
then, is that instruction ? The answer, evidently, 
must be, " It is that of the book itself. Whatso- 
ever the book, fairly interpreted, says, that he 
says." 

It is thus that we answer the question, how we 
shall discern God's Word in this Book, written by 
man, so various in its contents, and of so wide a 
range in form, date, authorship, etc. Every book 
composed for a purpose has a meaning. Personi- 
fied, we may say it intends to teach us something. 
Apart from and beyond what is said by the 
individuals mentioned in it, or what is cited from 
another, it has an utterance of its own, which by 
careful consideration can be distinguished from all 
others, and which constitutes the proper meaning 
of the book. And that meaning, in the case of 
the Bible, is God's meaning. What the book, in 
its own personality, says, He says. 

We shall be obliged to illustrate this proposition 
at some length. 

1. The first and simplest case is that where it 
reports God's own words spoken directly to men, 
as were the Ten Commandments, Ex. 20 : 1 ; Deut. 
4:33. Of course, there can be no difficulty here. 



104 our. father's book. 

But in order to determine what is the divine 
message to us, it is necessary to distinguish words 
which in their nature and circumstances were 
addressed to a single people only, as the Jews or 
some ancient nation, and what were designed for 
mankind at large. Thus even the Decalogue was 
spoken to the Jews. It is prefaced by the decla- 
ration, "I am the Lord thy God, which have 
brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the 
house of bondage." It commands, u Honor thy 
father and thy mother, that thy days may be long 
in the land (Palestine) which the Lord tlry God 
giveth thee." And yet, such is the nature of these 
requirements that their substantial meaning has 
ever been regarded as intended for all men. They 
were the Word of God directly to the Jews ; they 
are his Word indirectly to us. 

2. The same remarks apply to the words of Christ 
in the New Testament. He is himself the Divine 
Logos, or Woed, and his teachings are the very 
highest form of divine instruction to men. We 
are to distinguish here, as before, between what he 
intended specially for the Jews and what he 
designed for the world. His command to Peter to 
go and catch a fish and pay the temple tax with it 
was specific, and in form obligatory on Peter 
alone, but its moral import that the payment of 
lawful taxes is a duty is general, and as such is 
binding on all men. 

3. We may next instance the teachings of the 



THE DIVINE MEANING DISCERNED. 105 

apostles. The Book represents these to have been 
specially appointed by Christ to communicate his 
will; to establish institutions, and to instruct the 
churches in the principles and duties of Christian- 
ity. They were furnished with credentials to 
authenticate their instructions, in the miraculous 
and prophetic powers with which they were 
endowed. Such, at least, is the claim which the 
Book makes for them, and which for the present 
we take for granted. What they say, then, offi- 
cially, in the discharge of this duty, is clothed with 
the authority of their appointment, and is properly 
the word of God. " He that receive th you," said 
Christ, "receiveth me, and he that receiveth me, 
receiveth Him that sent me." The same distinc- 
tion, again, is to be made here as before, between 
what was local and personal in form, and what is 
universal. Paul's direction to the Corinthians to 
take a collection for the poor disciples in Judaea on 
the first day of the week, was of the former class ; 
but the duty of Christians to assist their poor 
brethren generally in a regular and systematic 
manner is of the latter. His declaration that lie 
would eat no meat while the world stands, if it 
should be the occasion of a brother's fall, expressed 
his personal duty while living among idolaters; 
but the spirit of it expresses our duty in respect 
to drinking wine, in these days when thousands 
around us are ruined by habits of intoxication. 
The same word which said to him, "Eat not," says 



106 our father's book. 

to us, " Drink not," and it is the same Divine 
Word in both cases. 

4. There is still one more example, that of the 
prophets. These were a class of men who claim to 
have been expressly appointed and accredited to 
speak in God's name under the former dispensation, 
as the apostles were under the latter. In the 
earliest times they were chosen by a direct call 
from God, and were taken from various ranks and 
conditions of men as pleased him. In later times, 
under the ministry of Samuel and his successors, 
a class of young men were specially educated with 
a view to this sacred office. They were the 
teachers of the Hebrew people, sometimes receiving 
new and original communications from heaven, 
and sometimes only expounding and applying 
those already given, like the preachers of our own 
day. These duly authenticated messages of the 
prophets, therefore, were to the people of their 
time the word of God. To a larger extent than 
those of the apostles they were local and specific, 
as in their denunciations of idolatry, and of 
violations of the laws of their land and their 
religion; yet under all these there was ever the 
assertion of great moral principles and truths 
which are immortal. They were in the letter the 
word of God to their contemporaries ; they are in 
spirit the word of God to us and to all men. 

Thus far the answer to our inquiry is easy. 
Whenever the sacred volume brings to us God's 



THE DIYINE MEANING DISCERNED. 107 

own words, or the words of Christ who came to 
reveal God to mankind, or the writings of apostles 
and prophets who spoke and wrote in his name by- 
virtue of the special commission they had received 
for that purpose, there we have the divine utter- 
ances. In the supposed volume or library pre- 
sented by a father to his family, whatever portion 
was written by himself or at his dictation by 
persons in his employment, is manifestly his. But 
suppose a portion which was neither. It does not 
bear his name, it was not of his composition, its 
authorship is unknown. And yet it is a part of 
the collection. It was chosen and placed there by 
him for the purpose of carrying out his design, and 
equally with the rest bears the stamp of his 
authority. How can the family discern his 
thought and his will in this ? 

We answer, the father intended whatever this 
book or anonymous portion properly means. Let 
us endeavor to explain and verify this assertion. 

We take, as an easy illustration, the genealogy 
of our Lord as given in the first chapter of 
Matthew. It is true that the Gospel of Matthew, 
as written by an apostle, comes under the first 
class of writings mentioned. But as probably 
this genealogy was not originally composed by 
Matthew, but was copied from the public registry 
of the Jewish families kept by the priests in (lie 
temple, it may well enough serve our purpose as a 
specimen. Who composed it we do not know, but 



108 our, father's book. 

it was placed here to express the Divine Word to 
men. And we say that Divine Word is what the 
record means. It means evidently to inform us 
that Jesus was in family descent of the line of 
David. The prophets had all predicted this of the 
coming Messiah. Matthew, a Jew, writing accord- 
ing to tradition for Christians of Jewish lineage 
and training, feels it necessary, in order to es- 
tablish the Messiahship of Jesus, to show from the 
public authorities, which nobody could question, 
that this first of all credentials belonged to him. 
He goes, we may presume, to the registry office, as 
a man would now go to the land registry to prove 
his title to a piece of land, and copies it off for the 
introduction of his narrative. And this record, 
so adopted, and by adoption approved, becomes 
of the same authority as if proceeding from his 
own inspired pen, and for this purpose is the 
Word of God. It is as if the H0I3- Spirit had 
dictated explicitly, " Jesus was a descendant from 
David." 

And this holds true, notwithstanding any verbal 
errors which may be discovered in the record 
itself. For instance, Matthew goes on immediately 
to show that Jesus, in absolute strictness, was not 
descended from David. Perhaps Mary was, and 
Jesus through her, but that is not what this record 
says. Taking all things together, then, we correct 
our first reading. It does not mean that Jesus 
was a descendant of David by natural generation, 



THE DIVINE MEANING DISCERNED. 109 

but in the well-known Jewish legal sense. He 
was legally the son of Joseph, who was in the line 
of legal descent from David. This is what the 
record, properly understood, means, and this, then, 
is what the Holy Spirit says. 

So with other criticisms that may be made of 
this record. Comparing it with the history in the 
Old Testament, we discover that three generations 
are left out between Joram and Ozias, viz., Aha- 
ziah, Joash, and Amaziah. (2 Kings 8 : 25 ; 14 : 21 ; 
15 : 32. Ozias is the Hebrew Uzziah or Azariah.) 
Why this omission was made, either on the record 
or by Matthew in the copy, we do not know. 
So, too, probably, the name Jelioiakim has been 
dropped out between Josias and Jechonias (1 
Chron. 3: 15, 16), and Pedaiah between Salathiel 
and Zorobabel (1 Chron. 3 : 19). And further, 
the word " begat " evidently cannot be used in its 
natural sense. Jechoniah (or Coniah), according 
to Jer. 22 : 30, had no children, and in Luke 3 : 27, 
Salathiel is said to have been the son of Neri. 
The word, then, must be used in what we have 
called the legal sense. If a man died without 
children, his next kinsman became his heir and 
was legally reckoned his son (Numb. 27: 8, 11). 
In the public documents the language would be 
made to conform to this rule. All these criticisms 
of the words, however, do not alter the meaning 
intended to be conveyed by them. That meaning 
still is, Jesus, according to the law and the pro- 



110 our father's book. 

pliets, was a descendant of David. That, there- 
fore, is the Word of Grod, and is inspired. 

We must not, however, make the mistake of 
inferring that the words themselves, unless in- 
volving errors in copying and transmission, are 
not also inspired. They are just the words which 
the Holy Spirit chose when he sent Matthew to 
copy them. Standing on the register itself, their 
value as an authority would be such that they had 
better be copied as they were than try to amend 
them, which might expose the evangelist among 
the captious Jews to the charge of tampering with 
the records for a purpose. For the record as it 
stood would mislead no one. It teaches just as 
well and as truly the fact intended, — viz, " Jesus 
was the son of David," — as if it had no omissions, 
and were as verbally accurate as a formula in al- 
gebra. If the purpose had been to show the 
strictly natural lineage, in the succession of actual 
parentage, the table, we have reason to believe 
would have been differently constructed. 

In other words, — and we deem the remark so 
important as to deserve a separate paragraph, — 
the Holy Spirit, in superintending the authorship 
of the sacred volume, was as free in the use of 
words, and in the form and structure of sentences 
and narratives, as any human author might be. 
The one thing to be done was to see that what 
was meant by his utterances, looking behind all 
verbal peculiarities, should be the truth. Indeed, 



THE DIVINE MEANING DISCERNED. Ill 

there is often a sublime indifference displayed by 
this Book as to nicer technicalities of language, a 
freedom that is almost startling. It uses popular 
speech, of the sun rising, the stars falling, the 
moon being turned into blood. It says God did 
tempt Abraham, and that he tempts no man. It 
gives three different copies of the tablet put up 
by Pilate's order over the head of Jesus on the 
cross. It says if all that Jesus said and did should 
be written, the world could not contain the books. 
So there is everywhere a noble liberty as multi- 
form and as vast as the operations of Nature, yet 
never misleading to him who seeks to know the 
truth. 

We next take an example from the Old Testa- 
ment, the Book of Ruth. In very early times it 
appeared as an appendage to Judges; but there 
are indications in its language that its composi- 
tion was of a comparatively late date. Who its 
author was is wholly unknown. It is a story of 
simple domestic life wrought with no small liter- 
ary skill, yet apparently not one which would 
require any special supernatural aid for its pro- 
duction. This story has been given a place in 
the sacred volume, and as such claims to be a part 
of the Word of God. How do we discern that 
word in it ? 

We apply the rule already announced. God's 
word in this book is that which the book teaches. 

First, there is an important lesson of genealogy. 



112 our father's book. 

It records the ancestry of David, the illustrious 
sovereign and psalmist of Israel, and through him 
of our Lord himself, and shows how the latter 
came to be a citizen of Bethlehem, thus confirm- 
ing and illustrating the narrative of his birth in 
the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. There is 
also, perhaps, a moral design, to abate the pride 
and bigotry of the Jews as the exclusive people 
of God by recording the fact that even David 
was descended from a Moabite, and the Messiah 
was a brother to Gentile as well as Hebrew. 
These facts, considering the sentiments and pre- 
judices of that people, and the relations which 
Christ was to sustain to mankind, were of suffi- 
cient importance to be embodied in a brief but 
distinct narrative, as a constituent part of their 
sacred oracles. 

Next, there are moral lessons of great force and 
beauty. These are so well sketched in the Pre- 
face of the book in the Speaker's Commentary, 
that we cannot do better than to quote them. 
" The book gives us a charming view of the do- 
mestic life of pious Israelites even during the most 
troublous times. Had we only drawn our impres- 
sions from the records of violence and crime con- 
tained in the Book of Judges, we should have 
been ready to conclude that all the gentler virtues 
had fled from the land, while the children of Israel 
were alternately struggling for their lives and 
liberties with the tribes of Canaan, or yielding 



THE DIVINE MEANING DISCERNED. 113 

themselves to the seductions of Canaanite idol- 
atry. But the Book of Ruth, lifting up the cur- 
tain which veiled the privacy of domestic life, 
discloses to us most beautiful views of piety, 
integrity, self-sacrificing affection, chastity, gen- 
tleness, and charity, growing up amidst the rude 
scenes of war, discord, and strife. In Boaz we 
have a model, not of the prowess of a warrior or 
the abilities of a statesman, but of the character 
of a rich man in private life. We see one whose 
deep faith in God breaks out in every word of his 
lips and every action of his life ; one attentive to 
his own business and diligent in the care of his 
own property; kind and friendly to his depen- 
dents, and beloved by them ; liberal, generous, 
and courteous to the poor and friendless stranger, 
observing and appreciating virtue in others, and 
practicing it himself under trying circumstances ; 
respecting the rights of others, even when they 
interfered with his own wishes ; observant of the 
laws of his country, though living in lawless 
times; mindful of his obligations to the living 
and the dead, alive to the ties of kindred, of coun- 
try, and of religion, and uniformly humble, quiet, 
and prudent in his conduct. In Ruth we have a 
touching example of devoted affection to her hus- 
band's memory, of love and duty to an adopted 
parent, and of industry, modesty, and patience, 
grafted on to a resolute choice of the true God 
and his blessed service in one who was by birth a 



114 our. father's book. 

heathen ; while in Naomi we have a more com- 
monplace specimen of a good woman whose reli- 
gion shows itself in fidelity to her earthly duties, 
which she fulfills with quiet pertinacity, and female 
tact and contrivance, but not without constant 
dependence upon God both in prosperity and ad- 
versity. 

" The moral of the history is also very encourag- 
ing to unselfish virtue. For while Orpah, whose 
love was satisfied with tears and kisses to her hus- 
band's mother, forfeited the place she had half 
gained in Israel, and returned unto her people and 
unto her gods ; and while the kinsman, who in his 
selfish care of his own interests, withheld what 
was due to the living and the dead, has had his 
name blotted out from the record of God's worth- 
ies, Ruth, on the contrary, who sacrificed every- 
thing that could fascinate a young woman to the 
claims of affection and duty, and Boaz, who un- 
hesitatingly did the kinsman's part, have their 
names crowned with blessings, and handed down 
to the church wherever God's Word is known, as 
worthy of all praise, and as the progenitors of that 
illustrious line which gave kings to Israel through 
near five hundred years, and from which was born 
at last, in the city of David, the Saviour, which is 
Christ the Lord." 

These, then, are the things which this anony- 
mous book teaches, and these, therefore, are the 
Word of God. They are surely worthy of that 



THE DIVINE MEANING DISCERNED. 115 

designation, and of a place in the Book which is 
to instruct men in all ages. The Holy Spirit has 
taken this delightful human story, and through it 
has told us most divine things. Who is there of 
the commonest sensibility of feeling and percep- 
tion that cannot discern what they are ? 

We proceed now to illustrate this principle gen- 
erally in reference to the remaining anonymous 
books. 

THE HISTORICAL. 

The larger portion of the Old Testament is 
history, from Genesis to Esther inclusive. The 
writers of it in no instance affixed their names 
to their productions, and the real authors are as- 
signed only by tradition, which, in most cases, is 
also conjectural. 

The instruction conveyed by history is com- 
paratively obvious. It is, first, the knowledge of 
the events related ; and, secondly, the lessons de- 
rived from them on the great subjects of truth and 
duty. Of the Old Testament history, the first ten 
chapters are designed to teach us the origin of the 
world, of the human family, of its subdivision into 
nations, and the primary organization of society. 
Leaving, then, these general topics, the narrative 
takes up a single family and follows down its his- 
tory from its cradle in Mesopotamia through its 
migration, and its patriarchal and servile states, 
until it emerges from Egypt and becomes in Pales- 



116 oue father's book. 

tine a populous nation, which, receiving from God 
a peculiar and distinctive system of institutions, 
and coming under a special providential training, 
is made the medium through which, in the full- 
ness of time, a Saviour and a universal religion 
are given to the world. It is not too much to say 
that a knowledge of this history is necessary to a 
knowledge of Christianity, which is its ultimate 
outgrowth. The later system has all its roots in 
the earlier, — nay, is itself but the consummate 
flower of that which had been growing and matur- 
ing within it during a period of not less than two 
thousand years. The instruction thus imparted is 
God's word to men. 

Besides this specific knowledge, the narrative 
imparts those practical lessons of wisdom and duty 
which are incidental to all history, and as much 
more in this as God's design with the Hebrew 
people was loftier and wider than with other na- 
tions. The laws of the Mosaic code have been 
the fountain and model of legislation for the 
greatest nations of the world. Its spirit has been 
operative to soften barbarism, to diffuse the prin- 
ciples of liberty and personal rights, to elevate the 
condition of women, to teach equity and virtue, 
and the refining and uplifting influence of a civ- 
ilization based upon a pure monotheistic religion. 
So, from the lives of patriarchs and sages, the 
heroic achievements of warriors, the counsels of 
statesmen, the conquests, the alliances, and the 



THE DIVINE MEANING DISCERNED. 117 

public works of kings, and the innumerable exam- 
ples of wisdom and goodness and piety in private 
life, have emanated through all the centuries those 
lessons, — the most effective of all because embod- 
ied in actual life, — which have tended to make 
the world better and happier. In them mankind 
have heard the voice of God speaking to the con- 
science and heart. 

Between the historical and prophetical portions 
of the Old Testament is placed a series of books 
having special characteristics, — Job, the Psalms, 
the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solo- 
mon. Some of these, especially the Psalms, are 
esteemed by all Christians as among the most 
precious portions of the sacred volume ; but if we 
attempt formally to establish their inspiration, 
and clearly to distinguish what in them is divine 
from what is confessedly human, we shall find the 
task by no means easy. We begin with 

THE BOOK OF JOB. 

Who wrote this book, and when, is unknown. 
The Jewish tradition which attributed it to Moses 
is not accepted by modern scholars. Its subject 
very much resembles that of some of the Psalms, 
viz., a discussion of the question why, under the 
government of a wise and beneficent God, good 
men suffer affliction, and bad men are often pros- 
perous. Job and his three friends, with Elihu as 
a self-appointed umpire, deliver alternate speeches 



118 our father's book. 

on the question, all of them saying true and ex- 
cellent things, yet all in some respects wrong. At 
length God himself interposes with a sublime re- 
joinder to the whole, reproving their presumption 
and self-confidence in attempting to settle by 
reason the profound mysteries of Providence, 
and teaching, as the true wisdom, humility and a 
trustful submission to Him who is wonderful in 
working, and his ways past finding out. Of 
course, the bare statement shows that none of 
these contestants were inspired men, nor their 
utterances to be taken as infallible truth. And 
yet the discussion is in the highest degree in- 
structive. It voices the anxious inquiries of good 
men in all ages respecting this grand problem of 
human experience, and, followed as it is by the 
reproving words of God himself, is well adapted 
to teach the lessons of patience, confidence in the 
divine wisdom, and a reverent and humble spirit 
in all the discipline of life. Those lessons consti- 
tute the divine element of the book, and make it 
worthy of a place in the sacred oracles. 

THE PSALMS. 

Scholars reckon up five collections of these sa- 
cred lyrics, of many different authors and of dif- 
ferent dates, from David, or possibly Moses, if he 
was the author of the 90th, to a period subsequent 
to the return from Babylon. These collections 
end respectively with the 41st, 72d, 89th, 106th, 



THE DIVINE MEANING DISCERNED. 119 

and 150th. They are as varied in their contents 
as in their authorship and dates. Dr. Robinson 
suggests the following classes : 1. Hymns in 
praise of Jehovah; tehillim in the proper sense. 
2. Temple hymns sung at the consecration of 
the temple, in the public temple worship, and 
the hymns of the " going up " or " Degrees," 
sung by the travelers on their way to Jerusa- 
lem at the times of the feasts. 3. Religious and 
moral songs of a general character. 4. Elegiac 
hymns, of lamentation, grief, penitence, etc. 5. 
Messianic songs. 6. Historical hymns. They are, 
as a whole, the utterances of devout men in the 
ancient church on a great variety of occasions, 
and expressive of a wide range of sentiment and 
feeling. There is adoration, thanksgiving, prayer 
for pardon and comfort and spiritual strength, for 
the welfare of Zion, for the overthrow of oppres- 
sors, for all things which could enter into the de- 
sires and aspirations of pious men in the ages 
when they lived. Yet these were all imperfect 
men, and their best devotions were often mingled 
with imperfections. We cannot say that their 
precise words were always the product of divine 
suggestion, or accorded with the divine will, any 
more than the similar productions of the best 
hymn-writers of to-day. But as the church of 
God itself, though full of imperfection, is divinely 
called and organized, and set before Che world to 
be representatives and servants of the divine will, 



120 our father's book. 

so these utterances of his people, springing from 
hearts renewed by the Holy Spirit, are gathered 
and set forth in this sacred collection to be ve- 
hicles of the devotions of others, and inspirers of 
like faith and penitence and holy desire in all 
time to come. 

And thus we undertake to answer the question, 
which is often proposed as a test of inspiration, 
"How is Psalm 137 the word of God?" It ap- 
pears to have been written b}^ one among the 
exiles in Babylon, and describes the pangs in- 
flicted on their hearts at being subjected to the 
taunts of their heathen masters, the depth and 
constancy of their attachment to their native 
Zion, and the expression of a fervent desire, very 
vindictive, yet very human, that some heartless 
conqueror might retaliate upon their oppressors 
in kind : " Happy shall he be that rewardeth thee 
as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be that 
taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the 
stones ! " Of course, neither these words, nor the 
feeling they express, though altogether accordant 
with the low plane of sentiment and even piety 
in that barbarous age, could have sprung from the 
divine suggestion. And yet the Spirit of inspira- 
tion, in making up a book for the instruction of 
the church, saw fit to place that song in it for the 
lessons it does teach, — of constancy in faith and 
attachment to one's native land and religion, and 
even as preparing the way to show by contrast 



THE DIVINE MEANING DISCERNED. 121 

the infinitely purer and grander spirit of the com- 
ing dispensation of the gospel, which bids men to 
love their enemies. 

THE PROVERBS. 

These, too, are collections of the wise sayings 
of wise men, — Solomon and others, — mostly 
about secular affairs or ordinary morality. The 
principles we have stated and illustrated apply 
to these. It is not needful to ask whether every 
saying here recorded was directly communicated 
to the writer by the Spirit of God. No one will 
dispute that they are very instructive utterances. 
They have been incentives to virtue, prudence, 
good morals, and wise living for hundreds of years, 
and to some extent all the more effective because 
they are so manifestly the suggestions of human 
experience. For this reason, and it was a suffi- 
cient one, it was deemed suitable by the Divine 
Spirit to give them a place in this book, and being 
so adopted, all its valuable lessons became the 
teachings of that Spirit himself. 

ECCLESIASTES. 
Yet further removed from our preformed ideal 
of a divine work is this book ; one of the very 
latest, probably, in composition, yet put forth by 
its unknown author, after a permitted custom of 
its age, in the name of Solomon. Few scholars of 
the present day view it as having been written by 



122 our father's book. 

that monarch. Taken as a whole, it may be re- 
garded somewhat as the confessions of a converted 
unbeliever and sensualist, who, having run the 
round of worldly pleasure, records the result of 
his experience, and his conviction that such a life 
is vanity and vexation of spirit ; that to fear God 
and keep his commandments is alike the whole 
duty and the highest wisdom of man. In this 
view, its ethical teachings are of great value, just 
as the recollections of Mr. Gough and others re- 
claimed from an evil life are powerful incentives 
to temperance and virtue. No wise parent would 
hesitate to place a volume of such confessions in 
the library of his family for the lessons that would 
be conveyed to them by it ; and by the same rea- 
son we may assume that the Spirit of God, who 
directed the prophets in the preparation of the 
sacred volume for the instruction of mankind, 
caused them to give Ecclesiastes a place therein, 
and thereby made it, with the rest, the Word of 
God. 

And now, last of all, what shall we say of 

THE SONG OF SOLOMON ? 

From very early times this " Song " has gener- 
erally been regarded as an allegory, designed to 
express the reciprocal affection existing between 
God and his people. The Jewish Rabbis, who 
were specially fond of this method of interpreta- 
tion, held that it was Jehovah and the Jews. The 



THE DIVINE MEANING DISCERNED. 123 

ear]y Christian Fathers, especially Origen, modi- 
fied the idea, and made it represent Christ and 
the church. There have always been the great- 
est difficulties, however, in developing the plan on 
either assumption. Nothing of the sort is appa- 
rent on its face, and only the greatest ingenuity 
and the most far-fetched and violent assumptions 
were sufficient to carry it out. Even so, almost 
no two commentators have agreed in the details ; 
and thus it has turned out that of all ordinary 
readers of the Bible in our day, not one in a hun- 
dred, we suspect, pretends to have any idea what 
the real meaning and intent of the book, as a part 
of Holy Scripture, is. 

The tendency of modern scholarship, as already 
intimated, is in a quite different direction. There 
is an inclination to adopt simpler and more nat- 
ural modes of interpretation for all parts of the 
Bible. The question is even entertained, Why 
may not a composition whose theme really is, as 
this seems to be, the human passion of love, be 
made the vehicle of important instruction for 
men ? No other passion, certainly, has more to 
do with human happiness and character than iliis. 
Why may not He who instituted marriage as the 
first and most sacred of all earthly relations, who 
enacted for its protection the most stringent laws, 
who made it the theme of repeated ami explicif 
directions, both from Christ himself and his apos- 
tles, and who finally appointed it as the symbol 



124 OTTB father's book. 

of the ineffable union subsisting between the Re- 
deemer and the saints in heaven, place in the 
volume that declares his will one short poem of 
love, in form and language and style corresponding 
to its theme, which shall teach to him who reads 
it aright His own divine thoughts and will ? 

Whichever view is taken of its design, the first 
thing requisite to an understanding of it is to dis- 
cover its plan. Even if it be an allegory, it must 
have some outline narrative as its basis. The 
parables of the New Testament and the Pilgrim's 
Progress have each a story, involving personages 
and actions, which serves as a thread on which the 
moral lesson is hung. It is confessedly very 
difficult to discern such a thread running through 
the Canticles. There is no formal narrative, ex- 
plaining place, time, or circumstances. The poem 
is made up of speeches or soliloquies, but the 
speakers are not named, and where each begins 
and ends is not always easy to discover. And 
yet clews are not wholly wanting, especially in 
the original, from a careful study of which, with 
the aid of some historical facts recorded elsewhere, 
scholars have developed the following plan. We 
quote from Professor Ginsberg, in Kitto's Cyclo- 
paedia : — 

" A village girl, the daughter of a widowed mother of Shu- 
lam, is betrothed to a young shepherd whom she met whilst 
tending the flock. Fearing lest the frequent meetings of these 
lovers should be the occasion of scandal, the brothers of the 
Shulamite employ her in the vineyard on their farm. Whilst 



THE DIVINE MEANING DISCERNED. 125 

on the way to this vineyard she one day falls in with the cor- 
tege of king Solomon, who is on a spring visit to the country. 
Struck with her great beauty, the king captures her, conveys 
her to his royal pavilion, then conducts her to Jerusalem in 
great pomp, in the hope of dazzling and overcoming her with 
his splendor, and eventually lodges her in his harem. But all is 
in vain. True to her virtuous love, she resists all the allure- 
ments of the exalted sovereign, spurns all his promises to 
elevate her to the highest rank, and in the midst of the gay 
scenes assures her humble shepherd, who followed her to the 
capital, that her affections are sacredly and inviolably pledged 
to him. Solomon, convinced at last that all his addresses are 
in vain, allows her to quit the royal residence. Hand in hand 
the two faithful lovers return to her native place, and on their 
way home visit the tree under which their love-spark was first 
kindled, and there renew their vows of constancy and fidelity. 
On their arrival, they are welcomed by their companion shep- 
herds, and she is rewarded by her brothers for her exemplary 
virtue." 

Inasmuch as this view of the poem will be un- 
familiar to many of our readers, and in order also 
to further illustrate the important method we 
desire to exhibit of seeing the divine in the hu- 
man, we will venture to give the following transla- 
tion, with a few explanatory notes : — 

TITLE. 
The Song of Songs, which is to Solomon. 1 
[The opening scene is laid in the country, as is apparent from 
the fact that in Chap. 3 : 6, Solomon and his attendants appear 

1 The phrase undoubtedly attributes the authorship to Solomon him- 
self, but it is generally conceded that the titles to the anolent Hebrew 
poems are without authority. The author of Eoolesiastes represents 
his work as having been written by the same monarch; but the claim is 
now almost universally rejected. For the evidence against the Solomonic 
authorship of this song, see the article in Kitto's Cyclopaedia. 



126 our father's book. 

coming from the country to Jerusalem. Shulam or Shunem is 
a village on the southwest flank of Little Hermon, three miles 
from Jezreel, and about sixty north from Jerusalem. Its 
present name is Solam. 

We first see the Shulamite in the women's tent of the king, 
with the other ladies of the harem, by whom she is attended 
and guarded. She sits pensively thinking of her betrothed 
lover, from whom she has been separated.] 

Shulamith (soliloquizing). 
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, 
For thy caresses are sweeter than wine. 
Thy perfumes are rich in fragrance ; 
Fragrance poured forth J is thy name ; 
Therefore the maidens admire thee. 
Take me away — 

The Ladies (interrupting). 
We will run after thee. 2 

Shulamith. 
The king hath forced me into the harem. 

The Ladies. 
We will rejoice and be glad in thee. 
We will praise thy charms above wine; 
Fittingly do they love thee. 

Shulamith. 
I am swarthy — 

The Ladies. 
and lovely, — 

Shulamith. 

O daughters of Jerusalem, 
As the tents 3 of Kedar — 

1 Poured forth; therefore pervading the air and more apparent than 
what is shut within its vase. 

2 That is, to prevent her escape. 3 Made of the hair of black goats. 



THE DIVINE MEANING DISCERNED. 127 

The Ladies. 

as the tent-cloths of Solomon. 

Shulamith. 
Do not disdain me that I am dark. 
Because the sun hath browned me. 
The sons of my mother were angry with me, 
They set me as a watcher of the vineyards — 
My own vineyard I did not watch. 1 
Tell me, thou whom my soul loveth, 
Where thou pasturest thy flocks, 2 
Where thou reposest at noon-day; 
For why shall I seem like one straying 
Unto the flocks of thy companions ? 3 

The Ladies. 
If thou knowest not, fairest among women, 
Go forth in the tracks of the flocks, 
And tend thy kids 
By the tents of the shepherds. 4 

SCENE II. 
[The king enters, and, seeing the young stranger, throws her 
a compliment] 
To my mare 5 in the chariots of Pharaoh 
I liken thee, my dear; 
Lovely are thy cheeks with beads, 

1 That is, herself. She was so intent in guarding the fruit of the 
vineyards that she did not perceive the approach of the king's cavalcade 
by which she was captured. 

2 This is the description of a shepherd lover, and cannot possibly, so 
far as we can see, have been addressed to the king. 

3 Her lover, not knowing what had befallen her, might fancy from her 
absence that she had been untrue to him, and had gone away with some 
rival among the shepherds. 

4 Spoken ironically, as if to say that if she was so insensible to the 
advantages now offered her of being a favorite in the harem, she had 
better go back and be a rustic. 

B See 1 Kings 10: 2G. The Septuagint says Solomon had forty thousand 
mares for his chariots. The comparison would not seem so strange to 
orientals, who have such a passion for beautiful horses. 



128 our father's book. 

Thy neck with necklaces ; l 

Chains of gold we will make for thee, 

With studs of silver. 

Shulamith (aside). ^ 
While the king was with his courtiers, 
My frankincense gave forth its fragrance. 
A packet of myrrh is my beloved to me ; 
It shall repose all night in my bosom. 
A bunch of cypress-blossoms is my beloved to me 
In the gardens of En-gedi. 2 

Solomon (repeating his compliments). 
Ah! thou art lovely, my dear, 8 
Ah! thou art lovely; 
Thine eyes are doves. 

Shulamith (apostrophizing her lover). 
Ah! thou art lovely, my beloved, 
Tea, charming; our couch is the green (grass); 
The beams of our house are the cedars, 
The ceilings are the cypresses ; 4 
I am a wild rose 5 of Sharon, 
A lily of the valleys. 

1 Resembling the highly ornamented bridle and head-gear of his steed. 

2 This, soliloquy is to be understood — " As long as the king was en- 
gaged in his business and did not trouble me with his addresses, I was 
happy in the thoughts of my betrothed." The figures she uses are but 
the carrying out of the conception with which she began, that he and 
his name were sweet perfumes to her. Such perfumes, of which so fre- 
quent mention is made in the poem, were profusely used by oriental 
ladies. 

3 There is much significance in the various terms of endearment used 
by the different persons. The one employed here is rather one of com- 
pliment than of affection. Very different are those used by the shepherd 
lover, and even by the king himself in the scene where he so ardently 
urges his passion. Chap. 7: 6, 9. 

4 All this in contrast with the splendors about her. How is it pos- 
sible to make this an address to Solomon himself ? 

6 That is, a simple uncultivated flower of the plain, suitable for her 
shepherd lover, but not fit for a palace. 



THE DIVINE MEANING DISCERNED. 129 

Solomon. 
As a lily among the brambles, 
So is my friend among the daughters. 

Shulamith. 
As the apple among the trees of the forest, 
So is my beloved 1 among the sons. 
In his shade delighted I sit, 
And his fruit is sweet to my taste. 
He brings me into the house of wine, 
And his banner over me is love. 
Refresh me with pressed grapes, 
Restore me with apples, 
For I am overcome with love. 2 
His left hand is under my head, 
And his right hand embraces me. 
I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, 
By the gazelles and the hinds of the field, 
That ye wake not, that ye incite not love, 
Until it wills. 3 

SCENE III. 

[Shulamith and the Ladies. She recites the history of her 
love. ] 4 
The voice of my beloved ! Lo, he cometh 
Bounding over the mountains, 
Leaping over the hills ! 
Like a gazelle or a young hart is my beloved. 

1 Referring to her betrothed. It is the term constantly used by her, 
and would be appropriate for a lady only as referring to her husband, 
actual or intended. 

2 All figures carrying out the comparison of her lover to the apple- 
tree. His endearments she fancifully calls the apples. It is probable 
that the so-called " apple" in this book is really tbe citron, a Bpecies of 
orange. 

3 That is, true love must bo spontaneous; it cannot be forced. Let 
the ladies desist from the attempt to enlist her affections for the king by 
constraint. The repetition of this language several times marks it as 
expressing the proper theme of the poem in which all the oilier parts 
center. 

4 For the purpose of showing how entirely her heart bolongs to 
another, and cannot bo the king's. 



130 our father's book. 

Lo ! he stood behind our wall, 

Looking through the windows, 

Glancing through the lattices. 

My beloved answered and said to me, 

" Rise, my dear one, my beautiful, and come forth. 

For, lo, the winter is past, 

The rain is over and gone ; 

The flowers appear on the earth, 

The time of the bird-singing has come, 

And the note of the turtle-dove 

Is heard in our land. 

The fig-tree spiceth its fruit, 

And the blossoming vines give fragrance. 

Arise, my dear one, my beautiful, and come forth. 

O my dove, in the clefts of the rocks, 1 

In the recesses of the cliffs, 

Let me behold thy form, 

Let me hear thy voice, 

For thy voice is sweet, 

And thy form is lovely." — 

Shulamith' s Brothers (interposing). 
" Capture the foxes, the little foxes, 
That despoil the vineyards, 
Even our vineyards in blossom." 

Shulamith. 
My beloved is mine and I am his, 
Who feeds among the lilies. 
Till the day cools and the shadows fall, 
Turn away, my beloved, 
And be like a gazelle or a young hart, 
On the mountains of Separation. 2 

1 Supposed to allude to the situation of Shulamith's home on the 
rocky mountain side. 

2 The brothers of Shulamith, not approving of the shepherd's suit, in- 
dignantly interrupt his address, and roughly bid her, instead of staying 
to listen to compliments, go to her charge in the fields for the protection 
of the blossoming vines from the depredating foxes or jackals. Compelled 




THE DIVINE MEANING DISCERNED. 131 

Shulamith relates her Dream. 
Upon my bed in the night hours 
I sought him whom my soul loveth, 
I sought him, but found him not. 
" I will rise now, and go about the city, 
In the market-places and the streets ; 
I will seek him whom my soul loveth." 
I sought him, but found him not. 
Found me the watchmen, 
Who go about in the city. 
" Whom my soul loveth have ye seen ? " 
Scarcely had I passed by them, 
When whom my soul loveth I found ! 
I clasped him, and did not let him go, 
Till I brought him to the house of my mother, 
And into the room of her that bore me. 
I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, 
By the gazelles and the hinds of the field, 
That ye wake not, that ye incite not love, 
Until it wills. 

SCENE IY. 
[The road to Jerusalem. The king returning in royal proces- 
sion.] 

Ladies of Jerusalem. 
Who is this coming up from the wilderness 
Amid columns of smoke, 
Exhaling myrrh arid frankincense, 
With every perfume of the merchant ? 

Men of Jerusalem. 
Lo, the palanquin of Solomon ! 
Sixty heroes around it 

thus to leave, she reluctantly dismisses her lover, and says lie must go 
and wander like a lonely deer over the wild wastes of " Separation." It 
is to be remembered that all this is what sho relates to the ladies of (he 
harem. She then continues with a tale of the dream sho had the follow- 
ing night, concluding, as before, with an appeal to them not to try to 
make her love any one else. 



132 our father's book. 

Of the heroes of Israel, 

All skilled with the sword, trained to war, 

Each with his sword by his side, 

Against alarm in the nights. 

A palanquin for himself King Solomon made 

Of the woods of Lebanon. 

Its standards he made of silver, 

Its canopy of gold, 1 its seat of purple, 

Its linings embroidered by love 

By the daughters of Jerusalem. 

Come forth, ye daughters of Jerusalem, 

And gaze upon King Solomon 

In the tiara in which his mother crowned him 

In the day of his espousals, 2 

And in the day of the gladness of his heart. 

SCEJSTE V. 
[In the palace in Jerusalem.'] 
Solomon. 
Ah ! thou art beautiful, my dear, 
Ah ! thou art beautiful ; 
Thine eyes, under thy locks, are doves ; 3 
Thy tresses are like a flock of goats 
Reposing upon Mount Gilead. 
Thy teeth like a flock of shorn ones 
Coming up from the washing, 
All of them twinning themselves, 
And none without her mate. 4 
Like a scarlet thread are thy lips, 
And thy speech is charming. 
Like a slice of a pomegranate 

1 Perhaps silken tissues of golden hue. 

2 Probably at his marriage with the daughter of Pharaoh (1 Kings 
3:1.) It was " a peculiar marriage custom, according to which the mother, 
in token of her approval of the alliance contracted by her son, with her 
own hand adorned him with a festive crown." — Zockler. 

3 Peeping forth like doves from their windows. 

4 In even pairs, upper and under. 



THE DIVINE MEANING DISCERNED. 133 

Thy temples under thy locks. 

Like the tower of David thy neck, 

Built for weapons of war; 

A thousand bucklers are hung upon it, 1 

All shields of the mighty ones. 

Thy bosom like young twin fawns, 

Feeding among lilies. 

Shulamith. 
Until the evening breeze blows, 
And the shadows steal on, 
I will retire to the Mount of Myrrh, 2 
And to the Hill of Frankincense. 

SCENE VI. 
[Shulamith and her lover. The Palace gardens in Jerusalem,] 
The Shepherd. 
Ah! thou art all beautiful, my dear one, 3 
And there is no blemish in thee ! 
With me from Lebanon, my betrothed, 
With me from Lebanon come ; 
Look off from the top of Amana, 
From the summit of Shenir 4 and Hermon, 
From the dens of lions, 
From the mountains of leopards. 

1 The pendents hanging from her ears and hair. 

2 Disliking this style of compliment, she signifies her wish to retire for 
the rest of the day. The " mount" and ''hill" here named are thought 
to be secluded places in the gardens of the palace. 

3 Learning of her capture, her lover, with a company of friends, lias fol- 
lowed her to the city, and has contrived to gain an Interview with her, 
possibly in the gardens. He is first delighted at her new beauty in the 
splendid dress and ornaments given her in the palace. He (hen bids her 
flee with him to the remote summits of Lebanon, whence they can look 
off on the plains of Damascus. The sight of her in her beauty, he says, 
has strengthened his courage to do and dare anything to rescue hor # 
How, we beg to ask, is all this conceivable If put in the mouth of Solo 
moil himself ? 

* The native name of Hermon. See Dent. :'>:{). 



134 our father's book. 

Thou hast made my heart strong, 
My sister, my plighted one, — 
Thou hast made my heart strong, 
With one (glance) of thine eyes, 
With one chain of thy neck. 
How lovely art thou, my love, 
My sister, my plighted one. 
How much sweeter thy love than wine, 
And the sweetness of thy perfumes 
Than all fragrance ! 

Shulamith. 
Thy lips drop honey, my espoused; 
Honey and milk are under thy tongue, 
And the smell of thy garments 
Is like the odor of Lebanon. 

The Shepherd. 
A garden locked is my sister-spouse, 
A spring inclosed, a fountain sealed. 1 
Thy plants are a paradise of pomegranates, 
With fruits of excellence, 
Henna and spikenard, 
Nard and saffron, 
Sweet calamus and cinnamon, 
With all shrubs yielding frankincense, 
Myrrh and aloes, 
And all chief spices ; 
A fountain of gardens, 
A well of living waters, 
And streams from Lebanon. 

Shulamith. 
Wake, thou North wind, 
And come, thou South ; 

1 A delicate way of saying she is still pure and chaste, true to him 
alone. The epithets following are expressions of his admiration, in keep- 
ing with the fancy that she is a safely inclosed "garden." It is a garden 
Avhich yields to him abundant sweets. 






THE DIVINE MEANING DISCERNED. 135 

Breathe upon my garden, 

And let the spices exhale. 

Let my beloved come into his garden 

And eat his fruits of excellence. 1 

The Shepherd. 
I come to my garden, my sister-spouse, 
I breathe my myrrh with my perfume, 
I eat my honeycomb with my honey, 
I drink my wine with my milk. 2 

The Shepherd's Companions. 3 
Eat ye, O friends, drink and be satisfied, 

ye loving ones. 

SCENE VII. 

[The Harem. Shulamith and the Ladies.] 

Shulamith' s Dream. 4 

1 slept, but my heart was awake ; 
The voice of my beloved knocked : — 
" Open to me, my sister, my dear, 
My dove, my perfect one, 

For my head is filled with dew, 

My locks with the drops of the night." 

" I have put off my robe," I said, 

" How can I dress me ?• 

I have washed my feet, 

How can I soil them ? " 

1 She responds in the same strain, and gives him permission to enjoy 
them. 

2 He accepts her gifts. 

3 These are supposed to have accompanied him for protection and 
companionship on his dangerous errand, and to have remained a little In 
the background while ho advanced to find Shulamith. They overhear the 
tender conversation of the lovers, and, charmed with their innocence ami 
beauty, involuntarily bid them Godspeed. 

4 The scene just described repeated itself in her dreams {he following 
night, which sho hero relates to the ladies, except that the details of it 
are changed. Her lover, she thought, came to her in the night to per- 
suade her to flee with him, etc. 



136 our father's book. 

My beloved put his hand through the lattice, 

And my pity was moved for him. 

I rose to open to my beloved, 

And my hands dropped myrrh, 

And my fingers flowing myrrh upon the handle. 1 

I opened to my beloved, 

But my love was departed, was gone ! 

My soul went from me at his word ! 

T sought him, but I found him not; 

I called him, but he answered not. 

The watchmen who go about the city found me ; 

They struck me ; they wounded me ; 

They lifted my veil off me, — 

The watchmen of the walls. 

I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, 

If ye find my beloved, tell him 

That I am languishing with love. 

The Ladies. 
What is thy beloved (more) than another beloved, 
Thou fairest among women? 

What is thy beloved ( more ) than another beloved, 
That thou dost so adjure us ? 

Shulamith. 
My beloved is fair and ruddy, 
A bannered one among a myriad. 
His head (crown) is of virgin gold, 2 
His locks flowing and dark as a raven. 
His eyes like doves by the brooks, 
Bathing in the white foam 
And sitting by the full waters. 
His cheeks are as beds of sweet flowers, 
Like trellises of perfumes ; 
His lips are lilies dropping liquid sweets ; 
His hands circlets of gold, 

1 Her lover had taken hold of the door on the outside with profusely 
anointed hands." — Zockler. 

2 A brilliant yellow turban or cap. 



THE DIVINE MEANING DISCERNED. 137 

Set with Tarshish stones ; * 

His body shining ivory, 2 

Overlaid with sapphires ; 

His legs are columns of marble, 

Set in golden sockets (sandals) ; 

His countenance is like Lebanon, 

Majestic as the cedars ; 

His lips are the sweetest, 

And he is altogether lovely. 

This is my beloved and this is my friend, 

daughters of Jerusalem. 

The Ladies. 
Whither has thy beloved gone, 3 
Thou fairest among women; 
Whither has thy beloved turned aside, 
And we will seek him with thee ? 

Shulamith. 
My beloved has gone down to his garden, 4 
To the beds of balm, 
To feed in the gardens, 
And to gather lilies. 

1 am my beloved's and my beloved is mine, 
Feeding among the lilies. 

SCENE VIII. 
[The same apartments.] 
Solomon. 
Thou art lovely, my dear, as Tirzah, 5 
Beautiful as Jerusalem — 

1 Topazes; perhaps referring to his polished finger-nails. 

2 His close-fitting white tunic or vest. 

3 Probably spoken ironically; taking literally what she had said oi 
their " finding" him. 

4 That is, repelling their irony, he simply has entered her heart ; ho 
enjoys her affections. 

5 A city about nine miles east of Samaria, in a very beautiful position, 
the capital of the kingdom of Jeroboam and Israel (1 Kings 1G : 8). 



138 our father's book. 

Formidable as bannered hosts ! x 

Turn away thine eyes from my face, 

For they agitate me. 

Thy hair is like a flock of goats 

Reposing upon Gilead ; 

Thy teeth like a flock of shorn ones 

Which come up from the washing, 

All of them twinning themselves, 

And none without her mate. 

Like a slice of pomegranate thy cheek 

From behind thy veil. 

There are sixty queens, 

And eighty concubines, 

And maidens without number. 

One only is my dove, my perfect one, 

The only one of her mother, 

The choice one of her that bore her. 

Daughters saw her and congratulated her, 

Queens and concubines, and they praised her. 

The Ladies. 
Who is this that looks forth like the morning, 2 
Fair as the white one (the moon), 
Bright as the hot one (the sun), 
And formidable as bannered hosts ? 

Shulamith. 
I was walking to the garden of nuts 
To look at the fruits of the valley, 
To see the blossoming of the vines, 
The budding of the pomegranates ; 
Ere I knew it my soul had put me 
Among the chariots of nobles. 3 

1 Referring to her frowns at being addressed with new compliments "by 
the king. 

2 Echoing the words of the monarch, as if with astonishment at her 
presumption. 

3 She had been so engrossed in thought that she did not perceive the 
approach of the royal guards. This is her answer to the accusation of 
being cold and frowning ; she is a captive. Here she apparently turns to 
leave the room. 



THE DIVINE MEANING DISCERNED. 139 

The Ladies. 
Come back, come back, O Shulamith, 
Come back, come back, 
That we may see thee. 

Shulamith. 
What would you see in Shulamith ? 

The Ladies. 
One of the dances of Mahanaim. 1 

Solomon. 
How beautiful are thy sandaled feet, 
Thou princely daughter ! 
The girdles of thy hips are like necklaces, 
The work of a skilled hand; 
Thy girdle clasp a round bowl filled with wine ; 2 
Thy bodice a wheat-sheaf bound with lilies ; 
Thy bosom like young twin fawns ; 
Thy neck a tower of ivory; 
Thine eyes pools in Heshbon, 3 
By the gate leading to Bath-rabbim; 
Thy nose like the tower of Lebanon 
Looking towards Damascus. 
Thy head upon thee is like Carmel; 
The locks of thy head like royal purple, 
The king is held captive in its ringlets. 

1 An evident allusion to Gen. 32:2. Mahanaim, in the dual number, 
signifies the two hosts or camps ; hence, the rendering given by our Eng- 
lish version. The " dance of Mahanaim " is therefore supposed to be a 
dance of two companies of ladies responding to each other with singing 
and music, like that of Miriam and her companions at tho Bed Sea (Ex. 
15:20). As Shulamith claims to be only a simple country maiden, the 
court ladies bid her perform a dance of that sort for the amusement oi 
the king. She is obliged to obey, and while so employed lie addresses her 
the voluptuous song that follows. 

2 That is, a round brooch or clasp consisting of a ruby set in a golden 
circlet. 

3 Heshbon, tho ancient capital of Moab (Dout. 2: 24). \ pool of water 
mirroring the blue sky is a beautiful simile for the Liquid blue eye of a 
lady. Probably reference was made to know n features oi the city. 



140 our father's book. 

How fair and how charming, love, 

Art thou in pleasures ! 

This thy stature is like a palm-tree, 

And thy bosom like its clusters. 

I said, I will climb the palm-tree, 

I will grasp its branches, 

And thy bosom shall be to me 

As clusters of the vine, 

And the breath of thy mouth like apples, 

And thy palate like good wine 

Going down for my beloved smoothly, 

Awaking the lips of the sleeping. 1 

Shtjlamith. 
I am my beloved's, and his desire is for me. 
Come, my beloved, let us go into the country; 2 
Let us lodge (on the way) in the villages. 
Let us rise early to reach the vineyards ; 
Let us see whether the vine nourishes, 
The grape blossoms are opening, 
The pomegranates are budding. 
There will I give my loves to thee. 
The mandrakes breathe fragrance, 
And at our gates, all precious things, 
Both new and old, my love, 
I have garnered for thee. 
Would thou wert as a brother to me, 3 
That nursed the bosom of my mother ; 

i The lascivious meaning of this address is unmistakable. How is it 
possible to see in it any expression of the love of Christ for his church ? 
The very suggestion seems to us shocking. Viewed as an address of a 
royal voluptuary to a new recruit for his harem, it is entirely in keeping. 
Shulamith's only reply to it, worthy of her insulted dignity and purity, is 
that she belongs to her lover only. 

2 An apostrophe to her lover, urging him to come and take her to her 
home. 

3 Spoken apparently in sudden remembrance of the harsh treatment 
her brothers had before shoAvn to her. Would that her lover was like a 
brother rather than a lover, for then she might receive him to her home 
without being repelled. 






THE DIVINE MEANING DISCERNED. 141 

I would find thee in the street ; 

I would kiss thee, yet they would not despise me. 

I would lead thee, I would bring thee 

Into the house of my mother. 

Thou wouldst instruct me. 

I would give thee to drink spiced wine 

Of the juice of my pomegranate. 

Thy left hand should be under my head, 

And thy right hand should embrace me. 

I adjure you, ye daughters of Jerusalem, 

That ye wake not, and that ye incite not love, 

Until it wills. 

SCENE IX. 
[Home again.] l 

Villagers of Shunem. 
Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness 2 
Leaning upon her beloved ? 

The Shepherd [arm in arm with Shulamith). 
Under this apple-tree I waked thee (to love), 3 
There thy mother travailed with thee, 
There travailed she that bore thee. 

Shulamith. 
Oh, set me as a seal upon thy heart, 4 
As a signet upon thine arm ; 
For strong as death is love, 
Unrelenting as Sheol is jealousy; 
Its shafts are brands of fire, 
A lightning flash from Jehovah. 

1 Her repulse of the king seems to have convinced him of the hope- 
lessness of his suit ; and we next see her with her lover on the way to her 
native village. The inference is that the monarch yielded to her pas- 
sionate entreaties, and permitted her to leave the ha rein. 

2 The open country ; leading up to the village on the mountain Bide. 

3 Some spreading tree in the garden or Held where the lovers tirsl 
pledged their affections. 

4 A passionate appeal from Shulamith that he will be true to her, as 
she has been to him. 



142 oue father's book. 

Many waters cannot extinguish love, 

Nor rivers overwhelm it. 

If one give all the wealth of his house for love 

With scorn shall he be scorned. 1 

Shulamith' s Brothers.. 
We had a sister, a little one, 
And she was yet a child, — 
" What shall we do for our sister, 
In the day when she shall be spoken for ? 
If she shall be a wall, 
We will build upon her a silver tower; 
If she shall be a door, 
We will close her with a plank of cedar." 2 

Shulamith. 
I am a wall, and my bosom like towers ; 
Then was I in his eyes 3 
As one that findeth peace. 
Solomon has a garden in Baal-Hamon ; 
He committed the garden to keepers, 
Each brings, according to his fruit, 
A thousand (pieces) of silver. 
My vineyard, which is my own, is before me. 

i Probably an allusion to the attempt which Solomon had made to 
win her by his riches and grandeur. Herein is the great moral lesson of 
the poem. Love must be spontaneous ; it cannot be bought. 
Golden words, worthy to be made the motto, the guiding truth, in every 
home of the world. 

2 This seems to be a recital by the brothers, who, after the death of 
their father, had had the guardianship of Shulamith, of what their plans 
had been for her when she was young. They had resolved that if she 
grew up virtuous and firm in honor like a wall, they would make her rich, 
but if she debased herself, iike an open door free to all that came, they 
would keep her in ignoble confinement, like a door stopped up by a rude 
plank. The thought and the expression are highly figurative, after the 
sometimes grotesque conceptions of oriental fancy. 

3 That is, Solomon's. Shulamith declares that she was firm under 
her trial, and her very charms, which exposed her to temptations, she 
made as towers of strength for her defense ; in consequence of which she 
won the favor of Solomon himself. 






THE DIVINE MEANING DISCERNED. 143 

The thousand (pieces) are for thee, Solomon, 
And two hundred for them that keep the fruits. 1 

The Shepherd. 

O thou that dwellest in the gardens, 
Our friends are listening to thy voice. 
Let me hear it. 

Shulamith. 

Haste thee, beloved ! 
And be like a gazelle or a young hart 
Upon the mountains of sweet Spices ! 2 

Our readers will compare this translation, made 
in accordance with the plan of Professor Ginsberg, 
with the more usual hypothesis of an allegory, 
and judge for themselves of its reasonableness. 
Whichever view is preferred, or even both if 
there be warrant for both in the recognized 

1 The meaning is obscure, but may be reasonably inferred from the 
usage of the poem in making a vineyard or garden and its fruits represen- 
tatives of a person and his pleasures. Compare chap. 1:6; 4: 12-1G ; 6: 2. 
Solomon's garden is therefore his royal state and equipage as it came to 
Baal-hamon, near Shunem. His officers and ladies are its keepers, minis- 
tering to his pleasures, each their share, viz., luxuries of all sorts, money, 
wines, rich garments, perfumes, and women. These are his thousand 
silver shekels. In contrast with his splendor, she had only one little 
vineyard, but it was her own, and its fruits could not be bought. Let 
Solomon have his luxuries ; let his courtiers and women share in them, 
each according to their deserts ; enough for her that she was free and at 
liberty to give her affections as she pleased. 

2 These words of the lovers are apparently a playful allusion to those 
spoken by them when last together here, at the time of their separation 
(Ch. 2:14-17). He addressed her then as dwelling in the mountain elitl's j 
now she is in the gardens of freedom. Then the "companions," her 
brothers, overheard them, and frowned upon her; now they heal her, 
and approve, lie asks then anew, as before, "Lot me hear thy voice," 
and her reply is the same, with one significant variation. She then hade 
him wander as a lonely hart on tho mountains of Separation} she now 
bids him speed exultingly to the mountains of sicfit Spioesi Dots there 
need to be an interpreter of her meaning? 



144 our father's book. 

laws of interpretation, is sufficient to make this 
book worthy of a place in the volume of God's 
Word. If for ourselves we give our preference 
to the former, it is solely because it seems to 
us best to accord with the rules which should 
govern us in the exposition of all parts of the 
sacred volume. At the same time, neither view 
necessarily excludes the other. We may suggest 
upon either hypothesis some of the divine lessons 
taught us herein. 

1. Take the primary sense of a love poem. We 
have here, first, a delineation of a simple, natural, 
mutual affection, such as God, our Father, and the 
author of our being, inspires. It has sprung up in 
appropriate circumstances between two young 
hearts of like age, outward condition, occupations, 
and tastes. It is pure in its origin and in its 
desires. Not a taint of mercenariness, unholy ambi- 
tion, or sensuality defiles it. It inspires, refines, 
and elevates their whole characters. It idealizes 
life and the world, and throws over all the work 
and care and monotony of this earthly existence 
a halo of poetry. In the words of its own beau- 
tiful eulogy : — 

" Strong as death is love, 
Unrelenting as Sheol is jealousy ; 
Its brands are brands of fire, 
A lightning flash from Jehovah. 
Waters many cannot extinguish love, 
Kor rivers overwhelm it. 
If a man would give all his riches for love, 
With scorn should he be scorned." 



THE DIVINE MEANING DISCERNED. 145 

Side by side with this pure affection, and in 
direct hostility to it, is pictured another of a 
different sort. A king, rich, powerful, voluptuous, 
has captured one of these young lovers, and seeks 
to add her a willing inmate to his harem. He 
offers her jewels and silks and perfumes. He causes 
her to ride in splendor in his royal processions. 
He employs the bedizened ladies of his court, poor 
victims of his sensuality, to sing to her his praises, 
and, if possible, seduce her to be one like them- 
selves. He loads her with flatteries and caresses. 
He will set her above princesses and queens. But 
all is in vain. The simple village girl, strong in 
her constancy and fidelity, repels all his endeavors. 
Standing before him in the dignity of injured 
innocence, her sweet, severe countenance, he con- 
fesses, terrifies him, — 

" Fair as the moon, clear as the sun, 
And formidable as bannered hosts." 

At length, just when our hearts begin to ache 
for her, both in sympathy for her trial, and through 
fear lest she will not prove strong enough to hold 
out, she reaps the reward of her constancy. The 
good-natured monarch relents; she is "in his eyes 
as one that found favor." She is dismissed from 
the palace, and, rejoining her lover, crowns his 
fidelity as well as her own with a union upon 
which we instinctively feel the blessing of the 
Lord will rest. 



146 our father's book. 

Now we submit that the two lessons thus taught 
are worthy of God to teach, and most needful for 
mankind to learn. Marriage, as he appointed it, 
is the first of all institutions, and the most funda- 
mental to the happiness and purity of mankind. 
Marriage perverted, debased by worldliness, sen- 
suality, and oppression, has been in all ages a most 
fruitful source of sin and woe. One of the first 
evidences that man had fallen from his primeval 
state was that he began to oppress woman, and 
from the days of Lamech, the first polygamist, to 
Sultan Aziz and Brigham Young, the annals of 
that foul wrong have continued to defile human 
history. Can any divine word of command or 
counsel intended to repress this awful wrong, and 
teach mankind the true idea of God's primal insti- 
tution, and of that sacred affection which gives it 
its strength and purity, be unneeded or out of 
place in his holy Book ? 

Let this divine poem, cleared of its obscurity, 
and made to utter distinctly its true instruction, 
be read alongside of that shameful record of the 
debauchery of Solomon in the eleventh chapter of 
1 Kings. May we not see a reason why such a 
book should have been then written and given to 
the Hebrew people? The splendor of the great 
king had been the wonder of the world. He was 
the visible earthly head of the kingdom of Jeho- 
vah. And such a head ! On that marble-crowned 
summit of Moriah was the temple which Solomon 



THE DIVINE MEANING DISCERNED. 147 

had built and dedicated to Jehovah, most Holy. 
And there beside it was Solomon's own house, 
the lawful mistress of which was Solomon's 
queen, the daughter of Pharaoh. Somewhere, 
too, near by was that other establishment filled 
with " women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edom- 
ites, Zidonians, and Hittites," " seven hundred 
wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines." 
Now, one reason why many think it impossible 
for Solomon to have written this Song is found 
in just these facts. Would he have suffered the 
virtuous young Shulamite to escape in the way 
here intimated? And if he did, would he be 
likely to have written out the story of his defeat 
and shame, to be quoted against him in all time 
to come? Much more probably was the poem 
written a little later, by some prophet in the spirit 
of Nathan, who reproved David for his sins, in 
order to teach the church, and especially the 
young, that Solomon's establishment was not an 
ideal one for domestic happiness, — that better a 
simple cottage under the apple-tree in the coun- 
try, with one true, faithful, loving heart to share 
it, than all the glory and guilt of the most exalted 
monarch. 

And even in our own day, what more salutary 
or needful instructions can be taught, especially to 
the young, than those which we have ventured to 
suggest as included in the primary intent of this 
sacred book? What mother could ask for her son, 



148 oun father's book. 

about leaving home to encounter the temptations 
of a city, wiser counsels than those here imparted ? 
Monastic habits are not practicable nor desirable. 
The young of both sexes are made for society. It 
is in this that the inspired maxim becomes emi- 
nently wise and true, "Keep thy heart with all 
diligence, for out of it are the issues of life." 
Amid the allurements which gayety and fashion 
and pleasure hold out, let them never forget the 
charms of simplicity and purity, guided by the 
fear and love of God. There are no sweeter 
songs than those which were sung three thousand 
years ago between two young, pure, constant 
hearts on the hills of Palestine, " My beloved is 
mine, and I am his." 

2. If now we revert to the other theory named 
as to the interpretation of this book, we shall find 
our way not a little facilitated by the view already 
presented. A theory so ancient, and consecrated 
by the faith and devotion of the church for so 
many ages, even though it be not in strict accord 
with our latest exegetical science, is certainly to 
be regarded with profound respect. 

This theory supposes that the personages which 
are mentioned in the song typify the Lord and 
his people. One of the chief difficulties, however, 
in carrying through the allegory consistently has 
commonly arisen from assuming that there is but 
one who claims the affections of the Shulamite, — 
or in other words, that the king and the shepherd- 



THE DIVINE MEANING DISCERNED. 149 

lover are the same person, representing Jehovah 
under the old dispensation, and Christ under the 
new. Says Kitto's Cyclopaedia: u What is most 
subversive of the allegorical theory is the fact 
that three principal persons appear in this Song, 
— viz., a shepherd, a shepherdess, and a king, and 
that it is the shepherd and not the king who 
is the object of the maiden's affection. This has 
been recognized by some of the most learned Jew- 
ish commentators of the middle ages, — viz., Ibn 
Ezra, Immanuel, etc., — and must be evident to 
every unbiased reader of the Song of songs." 

To remove this difficulty, then, we need to in- 
troduce three correspondent persons into the alle- 
gory. If the shepherd and shepherdess represent 
Christ and his church, Ave need only suppose that 
the king who would seduce her from her allegiance 
represents the prince of this world employing his 
temptations to detach her from her constancy to 
her betrothed. Thus viewed, the allegory becomes 
simple and effective. The church, though solemnly 
espoused to her Lord, is nevertheless in the terri- 
tories of his rival, the world. She longs for the 
society and the affections of Christ, but she must 
remain here, subject not only to the power of the 
world, but to the blandishments wliich the people 
of the world exert to draw her with them. 
Worldly glory assails hor, — the lust of the flesh, 
the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. She is 
flattered and caressed; she is promised riches and 



150 our father's book. 

glory. But all is in vain. Invincible in her love 
for her Lord, she resists all these inducements, 
with her triumphant song, " My Beloved is mine, 
and I am his." At last the Tempter retires baf- 
fled, and the Saviour, in reward of her constancy, 
receives her into a more intimate union here, which 
is consummated and perfected on the resplendent 
hills of rejoicing in heaven. 

It will not be difficult, for those who know what 
the love and fellowship of Christ is to a soul which 
has betrothed itself to him, to carry out the analo- 
gies suggested in this Song. We might cite the 
testimonies of many who, in the overflow of their 
hearts, have poured forth the utterances of their 
love. Thomas a Kempis, Fenelon, Madame Guion, 
Jeremy Taylor, Baxter, Edwards, Payson, and a 
thousand more, have left us songs as sweet, and 
set to the same tune as this ancient Song of songs. 
To such as they no word of ours will be needed to 
show us the divine in this book. Said Rabbi 
Akaba: "No man in Israel ever doubted the 
canonicity of the Song of songs, for the course of 
ages cannot vie with the day on which this Song 
was given to Israel. All the Kethubim (sacred 
writings) are, indeed, a holy thing, but the Song 
of songs is a Holy of Holies." 



CHAPTER VI. 

RECAPITULATION. 

We subjoin at the close of this discussion a 
brief review of the argument, in a somewhat dif- 
ferent order from that which was followed in the 
preceding pages. 

Taking, first, the Old Testament, we showed 
that it existed nearly in the form in which we 
now have it, in the time of our Saviour, and that 
it was used by him, and declared in many ways 
and times to be the Word of God. Indeed, he 
founded his own mission and claims as the Messiah 
upon its predictions, and commanded his disciples 
to search it as a witness that testified of him. All, 
therefore, that accept his authority must receive 
the inspiration of the ancient Scriptures as among 
the first Christian truths. 

The same fact was asserted with like directness 
and frequency by the apostles. Everywhere, 
when they went forth to proclaim the gospel of 
salvation, they based it upon the teachings of t lie 
Scriptures, " opening and alleging that the Christ 
must needs have suffered, and that thifl Jesufl 
whom they preached was the Christ." 

151 



152 OUR father's book. 

Starting, then, from this well-attested fact, we 
look into the Book itself to observe its history and 
origin. The growth of the various writings which 
composed it into a definite collection, called the 
Canon of the Old Testament, was gradual, and was 
not fully completed until at or very near the 
Christian era. The precise stages of this process 
we cannot assign, it having been gradual and 
spontaneous, like all living growths, and therefore 
leaving no formal record of itself in history. The 
fact of such process we have assured to us bj r the 
remit, the book as it is; and the divine superin- 
tendence which made it the Book of God, by the 
testimony already adduced of Jesus and the apos- 
tles declaring it to be such. 

The Book so made up and so authenticated to 
us, — the Book which was Christ's own Bible, we 
have designated as Our Fathers Book. And this 
authentication extends, by its very nature, to all 
the constituent parts. The father who presents 
to his son a birthday volume or librar}- for his in- 
struction gives him all that it contains. That son 
does not need to trouble himself about the sources 
from which it was obtained. He need not inquire 
who were its authors, what sort of men they were, 
when or where they lived, or any other fact per- 
taining to their personality. Some of them may 
be wholly unknown. They may have written 
originally for some purpose of their own without 
any forethought of the use which would afterward 



KECAPITULATION. 153 

be made of their writings. They may have de- 
rived their materials from original sources, or they 
may have used what had first been employed by 
others. We do not mean that all these points are 
without interest or importance, and worthy of being 
inquired into, but simply a full knowledge of 
them is not essential to the authority of the book. 
That authority is derived from the father's own 
acts in selecting and presenting the work. He 
knew their origin and characteristics, and his gift 
of them is all the imprimatur they need. 

This view of the case shows how little occasion 
for alarm or anxiety there is in consequence of 
recent critical discussions as to the authorship of 
the Pentateuch and other Old Testament books. 
They who claim that Moses did not personally 
write the five that bear his name, but that they 
were compiled and edited at a much later date, out 
of fragmentary materials coming down from him 
in the way of tradition, etc., do not therefore im- 
peach their truth or their divine authority. The 
learned and pious men of the Jewish church, 
priests and prophets, scribes and magistrates, who 
lived in the centuries following Moses, had oppor- 
tunities for knowing the facts, and their action in 
accepting these books is sufficient evidence of their 
genuineness. Suppose five hundred years hence a 
question could arise as to the origin and authority 
of the Constitution of the United Stales; would 
not an historian of that day point to the fact of its 



154 



OUR FATHER'S BOOK. 



actual adoption bjr the several states within a 
brief period following as conclusive, even though 
the records of the Convention that framed it were 
lost? So with all critical discussions of like char- 
acter. They no more affect the divine authority 
of the Book, than a question as to the authorship 
of the Imitation of Christ, or whether it was bought 
in New York or London, would affect the question 
of its genuineness or value as a portion of the 
father's gift. 

We dwelt at much length upon the characteris- 
tics of the Sacred Writings, upon their variety of 
composition and of style, and their adaptations to 
persons of all ages and capacities, and in all peri- 
ods of the world. We showed how these qualities 
increased their intelligibleness, their interest for 
all classes, and their power to move the heart. 
They are in all these things precisely in the manner 
of a wise father's instructions for his children, and 
are themselves among the most clearly marked 
evidences that they came from the source of all 
wisdom and goodness. 

We referred also to the principles which should 
aid us in distinguishing between what is divine 
and human in this Book, or, in other words, in 
discerning the divine in the human. The one 
test which is to be employed, and which is suffi- 
cient to guide us safely, is to ask what the Book 
means. Thus in Job, the divine thought is not to 
be found in what Eliphaz, or Zophar, or Bildad, 






RECAPITULATION. 155 

or Elihu, or even Job himself says, — for they 
were all wrong on the main question in dispute, 
and were reproved by the Lord for darkening 
counsel by words without knowledge — but in 
what the work as a whole is designed to teach, 
viz. : the inscrutable sovereignty of God's Provi- 
dence over mankind, and the duty of men to be 
humble, submissive, and obedient, and to wait for 
a full understanding of it till it can be read in the 
light of a better world. 

In respect to the New Testament, our remarks 
scarcely need a recapitulation. The result of the 
whole discussion we earnestly hope will be to 
confirm all who have read it in a clear and stead- 
fast faith in this Book as the Word of God, which 
worketh effectually in all them that believe. We 
hope the young, especially, will see that the de- 
mand made upon their faith is not without war- 
rant. There is much aggressive skepticism abroad 
in our day. There are daily assaults upon the 
Bible by those who are hostile to it, from the 
learned agnosticism, which makes it a merit to 
"know nothing," to the coarse blasphemy of Inger- 
sollism, but they have done no more to shake the 
foundations of God's Word than the storms and 
the waves of the Atlantic to disturb the eternal 
calm of the profound ocean depths. Despite all 
the pretensions of its foes, it remains true still, and 
never more so than to-day, that the world'* intel- 
lect bows to the authority of the Bible. 



BOOKS ON THE BIBLE. 



I. 

OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. 

THE HISTORICAL VALUE OF THE FIRST ELEVEN 
CHAPTERS OF GENESIS; 

WITH SOME DISCUSSION OF THE NEW CRITICISM. 

By Rev. D. N. BEACH. 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION 

By EDWIN B. WEBB, D.D. 

Pages xx, 66 Price, 75 cents. 



II. 

INSPIRATION. 

THE DIVINE AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE. 

By Prof. G. FREDERICK WRIGHT. 

Pages 241 Price, «1.25. 



III. 

THE BIBLE VIEWED PRACTICALLY. 

OUR FATHER'S BOOK. 

Bv I. P. WARREN, D.D. 



*** These books are independent each of tho others, but, in virtue of 
their subject-matter, constitute a natural series. 



ji B i PUBLISHED BY 



Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society, Boston. 



SABBATH ESSAYS. 



WORK OF PERMANENT VALUE ON A THEME 
OF VITAL IMPORTANCE. 

Price, $1.50. 

As a treatise on the Sabbath, designed to meet all ordinary 
inquiries on the subject, it will be invaluable to Pastors, Sabbath- 
School Teachers, Public and Private Libraries. It is the most 
valuable contribution recently made to the literature on the Sabbath 
question. 

The book contains thirty-eight essays and addresses, discussing 
the Sabbath in thirty-eight different aspects and relations. The 
essays are divided into sections, as follows: "The Sabbath in 
Nature," "The Sabbath in the Word of God," "The Sabbath in 
History," "The Sabbath in the State and in Society." The 
addresses follow, twelve in number, most of them on practical 
questions of Sabbath observance. A Historical Sketch on Sabbath 
Conventions closes the volume. The views of some of the foremost 
men of all the evangelical denominations are here brought together, 
presenting this great subject on all sides, furnishing a discussion 
that seems complete, and making the volume an invaluable text- 
book on the Sabbath question. 

For Sale by all Booksellers, or sent, post-paid, on 
receipt of price, by 

Congregational Publishing Society, Boston. 

GEO. P. SMITH, Agent. 



THE 



DIVIP AUTHORITY OF 1JE BIBLE. 

BY G. FREDERICK WRIGHT, 

PROFESSOR IN OBERLIN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 

Pp. 241. 5>£X 3 ^ inches. Boston: Congregational Sunday-School 
and Publishing Society. 1884. $1.25. 



Professor Wright has done a timely and helpful work in this 
compact volume. The title sufficiently indicates the purpose, 
namely, to set forth the authority, and that the Divine authority, of 
the Bible, that is, of our canonical Scriptures as a whole. This 
involves the brief presentation of the subsidiary topics of Inspira- 
tion, the Canon, the true method of Interpretation, the Difficulties 
and Objections; and some considerations of textual criticism, of 
alleged discrepancies, of Old Testament quotations, of the harmony 
of the Bible with science, and of the less directly spiritual portions 
of the book — all properly subordinate to the main discussion. 

The argument is inductive, proceeding by an appeal to facts, 
and not from preconceived theories. It is also clear and concise, 
establishing its positions, and illustrating them by specimen instan- 
ces, rather than by exhaustive and therefore exhausting enumer- 
ation. The main postulate from which the writer proceeds is " the 
acknowledged supernatural character of Christianity," in which 
"the stupendous miracle of the resurrection of Christ" is "the 
corner-stone" of our historic faith, easily supporting whatever 
other supernatural claims and utterances can be shown to have 
been put forth by that wonderful personage. ... It is a very 
clear, though succinct, statement of the valid reasons why we re- 
ceive our present Scriptures, and receive them as a final authority 
on all matters on which they profess authoritatively to speak. . 
. . . The volume is brief enough and clear enough to be readily 
followed, and will at the present time, we are persuaded, prove 
highly useful and helpful. — Bib. Sac, Oct., 1884. 



SEND ORDERS TO 

CONGREGATIONAL SUNDAY-SCHOOL AND PUBLISHING SOCIETY, BOSTON, 

GEO. P. SMITH, Agent. 



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